


boundless, terrifying freedom

by skyward_bloom



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy X
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury, Memory Loss, Sacrifice, Summoner Aerith, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 33,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29263749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyward_bloom/pseuds/skyward_bloom
Summary: “You’re here,” Cloud says, so puzzled it almost sounds like a question.“Yeah. I came as soon as I heard what happened.” Too soon, if you ask Tifa’s teammates, who were left high and dry in the semifinals without their right forward. Former teammates, she reminds herself.“…Why?”“Why? Because—” Her voice catches. “Why would I be anywhere else?”
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife, Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i was working on this semi-recently but let it collect dust for a bit, so i decided to change a few things and just post it, for my own peace of mind. i'm not sure how... coherent... or meaningful it will be to people who aren't familiar with both games. or to anyone in general. but. here it is anyway!
> 
> i hope i tagged everything necessary but lmk if i didn't!

A summoner has arrived at Djose. That’s what everyone’s saying, at least; Tifa hasn’t left the makeshift infirmary in the temple’s monastic quarters long enough to see for herself. She listens silently as the priests murmur about another sending, squeezing harder than she needs to as she wrings out a damp cloth to press to Cloud’s forehead.

A sending for the dead. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Not when she’s had to watch his fever worsen, listen to his cries of pain as the healer changes the dressing on his wounded arm, sit by uselessly as he whimpers and thrashes about at night. She pretends not to notice when one of the priests shushes the other, when they glance at her guiltily, as though only just remembering she’s there. _Not in front of the girl with the lost cause,_ the look says. _No need to remind her it’s hopeless._

Many of the wounded from Operation Mi’ihen have already begun to recover and been carted back to Luca or Bevelle, or else succumbed to their injuries and left for the Farplane. The ones remaining have all been put up temporarily at Djose Temple, cared for by the priests and priestesses who live there. A small few of the clergy are trained in basic magic, but none of their spells can heal the damage of Sin’s toxin, nor can the traditional medicine of the healers. The best they can do is pray for the mercy of Yevon and try to ease the suffering of people like Cloud, who—

No. She isn’t going to think that way. Until it’s over, there’s always hope, she tells herself. There has to be.

She watches his eyes flutter open weakly, and he regards her with bleary, feverish recognition, like she’s a ghost or a dream. His lips move, but none of the noises that come out are words. Chest tight, she moves the cloth from his forehead and presses it to his flushed cheek. With her other hand she takes hold of one of his, the one on his good, uninjured side, squeezing reassuringly and almost choking on her relief when he gives the barest, tiniest squeeze back.

“I’m not giving up,” she says in a hushed undertone, “and neither are you, got it?”

He doesn’t answer, if he even heard her at all. His eyes are already closed again, his breaths shallow yet rhythmic, a papery rasp. Looking at him now—his pallor sickly, hair matted to his skin, undereye circles so deep they turn his face impossibly gaunt—Tifa comes to a decision. She isn’t going to sit around and just expect something to happen. In the evening, she’ll go to the temple proper and find the summoner. She’ll wait by the entrance to the Cloister of Trials all night if she has to. And if they don’t agree to heal Cloud, she’ll—she’ll—she doesn’t know what she’ll do, but that isn’t going to stop her this time. Cross that bridge when she gets to it.

For now, though, she’s going to stay by his side, holding on desperately to his sweaty, too-weak hand as he lies there on his cot, so far gone he likely doesn’t realize she’s even there. She soaks the cloth in cool water again, drags it along his hairline, barely holds herself together when his thumb makes the lightest pressure on her wrist.

“Damn,” Zack mutters.

Aerith hums in agreement. On the way south they’d run into small caravans of Crusaders who’d been at Mi’ihen, all of them grim-faced and shaken, unwilling to talk of what had happened except to curse Sin and Maester Heidegger and Yevon all in equal measure. She couldn’t blame them, couldn’t judge; they’d all been led eagerly to the slaughter, used as tools and then discarded. The deaths of their friends had meant nothing. She understood then, and understands even better now, looking on at all the wounded gathered around the temple still, the chocobo-drawn cart taking another set of bodies back down the Djose Highroad.

The lone chocobo is tired, marching at a sluggish pace as pyreflies drift lazily around its haul. But it’s smart enough to know that its work is important, and the driver gently urging it down the road knows, too. The unsent dead have to be taken away far from the living to be buried, or the fiends they’re wont to leave behind in their biting resentment will take more innocent lives with them. It’s a vicious cycle that can only be broken through terrible pragmatism, bodies hauled away on carts and piled into anonymous graves.

Aerith finds a priestess and asks her where the dead are being taken. Bowing, the woman answers, “Back to Mushroom Rock, your ladyship.” When she straightens, she asks, “Will you help them?” There’s a bone-deep tiredness about her, the kind that won’t be cured by any amount of rest.

“Of course,” says Aerith. She glances to Zack. “We’ll go right now.”

He nods in understanding. She gives half a thought to asking him to stay here and do what he can to help out around the temple, but she knows he’s loath to leave her alone. Protective almost to the point of it being stifling. There will be things to keep him occupied at the burial site, too, at least. Rites to help with. Supplies and bodies to move.

They venture down the road with a small group from the temple, lagging just behind a loaded cart, and make it to the shore beside Mushroom Rock, where the fallen Crusaders lie in clumsily-dug, nameless graves. The priestess from before—Folia—explains that this is where they’ve had to bury the ones who passed in the days following the operation. The first ones to die have already been sent. Another summoner was passing through at the time, says Folia, but couldn’t delay her own pilgrimage and had to keep moving along. And it makes a certain kind of sense. A summoner’s duty is to the people of Spira, both living and dead, but above all they are called upon to journey, to pray, to sacrifice.

Aerith stays there at the shore for hours, directing the fallen on to the Farplane, coaxing the masses of pyreflies to gather and then float softly away. If there are any fiends around, she never sees them; either the pull of her dance lulls them peacefully back into their death-sleep, or else Zack gets rid of them before they can become a problem. She doesn’t dwell on it either way. Every thought that touches her mind while she continues her dance along the sand and loose dirt just drifts away as quickly as it comes, immaterial.

When all the recently departed have been accounted for, Aerith plops down on a rock just out of the tide’s reach and looks out at the ocean, panting as quietly as she can manage. Someone hands her a waterskin and she barely gets out her mumble of thanks before guzzling the whole thing, rivulets escaping along her chin and throat and down the neckline of her dress. She doesn’t bother wiping them away. She’d have dumped half of it over herself to cool off if she didn’t know exactly how appalled the clergy would be by the impropriety of it. Not, of course, that she cares.

“I’m fine,” she says, smiling, the third time that someone asks her if she needs anything. “Just resting for a minute.” She lets them believe the exertion has caught up to her, though that’s not the extent of it. She caught her second wind ages ago, her third even more recently. The ache in her legs and shoulders hasn’t had time to settle in just yet—will later, of course, but not until she’s finally settled in for bed. She’s learned too well how to ward away exhaustion until she collapses. In truth, it’s just that she needs this moment right now, this view of the lonely sea, boundless and alien. It’s so different from home, which is all sharp cliffsides and grassy plains, snow in the winter.

A hand comes to rest on her shoulder. She knows without looking whose it is. She says to him, “It looks so sad out there. All that nothing.”

Zack—who comes from an island village, she knows, a speck in the ocean, too small and too far out of the way for anyone to ever go there—replies, “It’s what you make of it, I guess.” Then he says, “Come on, they all wanna feed you and talk about how great you are.”

She turns to him now, grinning. “Oh no, we can’t have that,” she teases. “Just think of how it’ll go to my head.”

“Like it hasn’t already,” he says, more fond than sarcastic.

She lets him help her to her feet, even though it isn’t necessary; leans into his side, even though she doesn’t need to; beckons him closer and plants the briefest kiss on his mouth, even though it scandalizes the priests somewhat—or maybe _because_ of that, because she’s never been good at following all the rules and being the paragon of composure and infallibility that Yevon expects her to be, and only gets worse over time.

They get back to the temple at Djose near the end of the golden hour, dusk closing in right on their heels. A meal is being prepared. Aerith excuses herself to try to fix her hair, take her boots off and clean her feet, which had been necessarily bare throughout the sending rites and are caked with sand. She’s in the middle of wiping one sole with an old scrap of fabric in the washroom when a flustered-looking priestess bursts in.

“Apologies, Lady Aerith,” says the priestess, glancing quickly back over her shoulder. “I told her you needed rest, but she wouldn’t—”

Another figure bursts through the doorway, a young woman who is decidedly not from the temple: She’s dressed in a cutoff shirt and loose, gaudy shorts held up by thick suspenders. Her long hair is mussed and frazzled, tied back in a haphazard ponytail. She’s looking at Aerith with a sort of crazed desperation in her eyes. Just like Folia, the priests, the chocobo dragging a cart with too many bodies, she’s so tired it’s seeped into her very core and become a living organism inside her, a parasite.

“I need your help,” the woman blurts, as though she hasn’t just walked in on a summoner who’s in the process of washing her sand-coated feet with a dingy washrag.

But that earnest desperation is all Aerith has to see. She stands and drops the rag, saying, “Okay,” and follows the woman out the door, ignoring the sputtered protests of the aging priestess.

The summoner keeps frowning as she examines Cloud. It probably isn’t a good sign. Tifa’s bitten her lip so hard she can already taste blood on her tongue as she waits anxiously for a verdict.

“He’s been hit really hard by the toxin,” says the summoner.

“Can you help him?” Tifa finally dares to ask, hating how much her voice shakes.

“I think so. I probably can’t undo most of the damage, but I should be able to stop it.”

The summoner—oh, what was her _name?_ Air-something?—sits back on her heels and shuts her eyes. She doesn’t quite touch Cloud, instead letting her hands hover just above him, ghosting over his face, his chest. The soft glow of pyreflies swirls around the two of them, then turns to a burst of violet light that washes quickly over him.

As the light subsides, he lets out a pained moan. Tifa’s heart shoots up into her throat at the sound.

“Don’t worry,” the summoner murmurs. “He’s just regaining his awareness now that the fever’s gone.”

Pyreflies dance around them again, and this time there’s a surge of swirling white-pink bursting over him. It’s a larger feat of magic than Tifa thinks she’s ever seen before, a great deal more impressive than anything the priests have done. And as the summoner’s arms fall to her sides, Tifa sees Cloud’s eyes open, sees him squint against the light in the room, sees him scrunch his nose unpleasantly.

“Cloud?” she breathes, still reluctant to hope at all.

He turns his head toward her and opens his eyes just a little more. His voice is raspy with disuse when he tries to speak, but after a couple of attempts he manages a groggy, “Tifa.”

For the first time since she came to Djose, since she made the frantic trek alone from Luca and spent hours, _days_ looking over the bodies of the wounded and deceased she came across in the hopes of finding the one person she was searching for, Tifa finally cries. All the dread that had built up over the past week is gone, so forcefully punched out of her it’s left her winded, and all she can do is sob in tiny, hiccupping squeaks while she curls into herself and tries to cover her eyes with one arm, shielding herself from the rest of the room.

She lost everything when Sin attacked Kilika all those years ago. When she heard about the catastrophe at Mi’ihen, she thought she’d lost him, too, this boy who’d walked out of her life once already. And despite all her insistence that she wasn’t going to give up, despite how hard she’d worked to keep both of them here and together, she’d just been waiting for the other shoe to drop, really. Because that’s just how life goes, robbing them of everything they have bit by bit. But not this time. Not him.

The summoner, whose name she’ll later learn is Aerith, crawls over and puts an arm around her, gently shushing her like a mother comforting a bawling child. She rubs Tifa’s arm and pets her hair and says, “See, everything’s fine,” slurring from her own exhaustion. “He’s right here. You’re both okay.”

Somewhere between those stupid, embarrassing hiccups, Tifa manages to thank her, earning another soft pat in reply, and then praises Yevon as an afterthought. She calms down and the sobbing fades to noisy, gross sniffling. The summoner hands her a little handkerchief, then gets to her feet, stumbling slightly.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” says the woman, even though they aren’t alone at all in this room with half a dozen other wounded soldiers, who are all worse off than Cloud was. But she gives Tifa a tired little smile and starts to hobble away, leaning on her staff.

“Thank you,” Tifa croaks again.

The summoner pauses in the doorway. “It’s no problem at all,” she says in her too-soft, too-sweet voice. “That’s what I’m here for.” Then she goes.

Tifa takes a moment to wipe all the tears and snot from her face, delicately as she can manage. The handkerchief is made of fine cloth, with embroidered symbols of Yevon lining the sides. Probably too nice for a person to wipe their nose on, she thinks guiltily.

She jolts at the sound of a throat clearing, a miserable cough, and finds Cloud watching her with focused, lucid eyes. Before she can ask how he’s feeling, he says throatily, “Who w’s that?”

“A summoner,” says Tifa. “You were really sick for a while, you know.”

“Oh.” He licks his lips. “Yeah, feel like it.”

“Do you need—?” she starts, but goes quiet when she sees him open his mouth to talk again.

“You’re here,” he says, so puzzled it almost sounds like a question.

“Yeah. I came as soon as I heard what happened.” Too soon, if you ask her teammates, who were left high and dry in the semifinals without their right forward. Former teammates, she reminds herself.

“…Why?”

“Why? Because—” Her voice catches. “Why would I be anywhere else?”

“Oh,” he says again, still sounding confused. He looks as though he wants to say something else, but he just stares at her, dazed and lost, helpless. She’s reminded of the boy who sat beside her down by the docks and said he was leaving for the mainland to join the Crusaders, and how he gaped and blushed carnation-pink when she asked him to come back someday and rescue her, because that’s how it always goes in the stories.

She helps him drink water and have a few spoonfuls of cold broth before he admits to still being tired. Without a complaint, she gets him settled back in and draws the covers over him. There’s color in his cheeks now as he drifts off, and when Tifa presses the back of her hand tentatively to his forehead, it’s no longer burning hot. Thank Yevon, she thinks, sagging with relief.

Even knowing there’s nothing to fear, she still makes herself comfortable right by his bedside, where she falls into the first restful sleep she’s had in what feels like a long, long time.

“We can put it off a day.”

“We don’t need to,” Aerith says, not for the first time as they make for the entrance to the temple. It’s late in the morning already, later than she’d hoped to start on the trials.

“You need to rest,” Zack insists. “You exerted yourself too much yesterday! Besides, if you fall over half-dead before we get to the Chamber of the Fayth, how d’you think that’ll make _me_ look, huh?”

“I’m fine, Zack. How many times do— _whoa!_ ” She trips over absolutely nothing and only just manages to catch herself before she falls. A few passersby watch in alarm. The heat of an embarrassed flush blooms over her skin. She dusts off her skirt nonchalantly, waving Zack’s hands away as she straightens.

“Can you _please_ take the day off?” he asks, big shining eyes so full of worry it’s sort of comical. A tall, muscular man with a greatsword on his back, and here he is making the saddest puppy eyes in all of history. “The fayth is still gonna be there tomorrow morning.”

“Excuse me, do you think High Summoner Gandof took days off?” Aerith shoots back, channeling every old priestess she’s ever known.

“When he was tired, yeah! He probably did!”

She sighs and pushes the doors open. “Stop being a baby. We’re—oh, hi there,” she says, seeing the woman from the previous day just inside of the temple, seated at the foot of Yocun’s statue.

The woman scrambles to her feet. Aerith couldn’t say for sure, but she thinks the brightly-colored outfit could be a blitzball uniform. She’s never seen a blitzball game before. They don’t really have anywhere to do it in the Calm Lands, and Bevelle is too proper and civilized for anything as barbaric as playing sports.

“Hi,” says the woman, then bows. “Um. Lady Aerith, right?”

“Just Aerith is fine,” Aerith replies, resulting in soft gasps from the nearby clergy. “Sorry, I don’t think I got your name yesterday.”

“Tifa,” says the woman. “I just wanted to thank you again. For everything you’ve done here.”

Aerith smiles. Every time she’s able to save someone, or make them even a little bit better, the joy in people’s faces sparks a flare of warmth inside of her. “I’m glad I could help,” she says. Then, “Oh! This is Zack, my guardian. Zack, this is Tifa, the one whose—” She pauses, uncertain. “—friend was sick from the toxin.”

Zack says, “Hey,” while Tifa offers, “Nice to meet you.”

“We were just about to start the Cloister of Trials,” says Aerith.

“But we’re more than happy to put that off, if there’s literally anything you need,” says Zack. He dodges to the side when Aerith tries to elbow him in the ribs.

Tifa bites her lip. “I did want to talk to you about something, actually,” she says, “but if you’re in a hurry—”

“Not at all,” Aerith and Zack reply in tandem. Aerith adds, “It’s not like the fayth’s going anywhere, right?”

“ _Now_ she agrees,” Zack mutters.

“Okay, um—follow me,” says Tifa.

They wind up in a little clearing tucked away practically behind the temple. There are holes in the dry ground where a tent had been set up and later taken down again. More of the sick and injured are being moved back down the Highroad, or else taken across the Moonflow to be treated by the Guado. The previous day’s work helped assuage everyone’s fear of fiends plaguing the roads, and Aerith’s presence seems to have given them the drive to start clearing out the temple at last. She’s glad, of course, but it’s strange even now to think of the effect she has on people just by being here. All because of what she is.

“So,” says Tifa. “I was trying to think of how I could repay you for healing Cloud.”

“You don’t have to,” Aerith cuts in. “Really, it’s just part of my job.”

“She’d do it even if it wasn’t,” says Zack. He bumps Aerith gently in the side, beaming at her with unmistakable adoration. She smiles back, lays her head on his shoulder. “It’s just how she is.”

“Still,” says Tifa. “I know this must be just a normal, everyday thing for you, but to me, it’s—” She breathes in. “If there’s a way that I can return the favor, I’ll do it. Which is why I’m… offering to be your guardian.”

Aerith gapes, speechless. Beside her, Zack sputters in shock.

“I know you don’t have any proof I’d be good at it,” Tifa goes on, wringing her hands nervously, “but before I started playing blitzball I actually studied martial arts for a long time, believe it or not. A-and it’s not that I think you _need_ another guardian,” she adds hurriedly, “but one more couldn’t hurt, could it?”

“I guess that’s true,” says Aerith, still a bit dumbstruck. “But… what about that guy you’re with? Cloud, right? Don’t you need to stay with him?”

Tifa winces. “We talked about it. He thinks I should go.”

“Oh?” Aerith purses her lips. “Can I talk to him?”

Tifa hesitates, then nods.

The worst part about having been plagued by Sin’s toxin for several days is that there are whole chunks missing from Cloud’s memory now, things that are muddled or hazy or just gone. He’s been clutching a bowl of congealed porridge for at least ten minutes, trying to remember the name of a color he now realizes, with no shortage of frustration, is green. The herbs the healer is grinding with the mortar and pestle are _green_.

But it’s something, at least. This time yesterday, he was barely aware he was a person, his mind grasping frantically at any pieces of information he could hold onto to confirm his own existence. He processed one thing at a time: arm, pain, hot, water, voice. Something touched his—he struggled to make the connection—oh, _hand_ , and he tried to grasp at it, figure out what it was, only to come up deliriously empty. He saw someone he thought was Tifa, but that didn’t make sense. Why would Tifa be with the Crusaders? He wasn’t sure who else it could be, though, or even where he was, so he clung to that one thought like a lifeline: Tifa was there. She found him.

And, impossibly, it really was Tifa. Is. She’s been looking after him, barely letting him out of her sight since she first arrived, according to the healer. (Cloud keeps forgetting her name and having to backtrack through a series of clues to remember it. Something that sounds like a tangle of roots in the water. Marle. That’s it. Marle.)

“She barely got any sleep this whole time, you know,” says Marle. She’s old, and her voice has a roughened quality to it that makes him suspect she smokes a pipe daily. The herbs she’s grinding down for a poultice crunch softly, like leaves underfoot. “And every time you made the slightest noise, she’d go running to get someone like you were dying.”

“Didn’t mean to cause trouble,” he mumbles, chastened.

“Don’t give me that,” says Marle, in the singularly reproving way of a grandmother. “You’re just lucky to have someone who cares about you enough to be a nuisance. That’s all anyone needs in life.”

Is it luck? It doesn’t feel like it. All he’s done is be a burden on Tifa and make her worry unnecessarily. All because of some idiot mistake, some entirely stupid, fruitless, heretical plan that got so many of his comrades killed—and that should’ve killed him, too, if he’s being honest. There’s no reason he should be here, alive and awake and healthy, despite all the holes in his brain, when so many dozens aren’t. It’s not—not— _not—_ he can’t recall the word. So useless he can’t even grieve properly.

(Fair. He’ll find the word again, days or weeks from now, uttered by a child throwing a tantrum in a shop. _It’s not fair_. By the time Cloud has it in his grasp, though, it won’t matter as much.)

His sulking is interrupted by someone walking into the infirmary, then closing the door again. It’s a woman, wearing a long pink dress, a red obi, and a large bow in her hair. She looks familiar, though he doesn’t bother trying to figure out from where. She might not even be familiar at all. He has no way of knowing, and he hates it.

“Good, you’re awake,” she says when she sees him, her voice light and cheerful. “Oh, you don’t have to get up on my account,” she adds to Marle, who’s started to get to her feet.

“Who are you?” Cloud asks bluntly. He hears Marle make a disgusted noise at his poor manners. Considering the state he’s in, he doesn’t see why anyone should expect much of anything from him.

“You mean you don’t remember me?” Cloud shakes his head. “Well, I’m Aerith, the one who healed you. You’re Cloud, right?”

“Yeah.” The summoner. Of course. How can he fuck up so badly that he doesn’t even recognize the summoner who saved his life? Looking down at the porridge, he says awkwardly, “Sorry. Not really at my best right now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Aerith. “Anyway, I’m here to talk to you about Tifa.”

“What about her?”

“I heard you told her to leave and become my guardian.”

He frowns up at her. “I didn’t tell her to do anything. Just said it might be a good idea.”

“Uh-huh.” Aerith eyes him dubiously. “And what if _I_ don’t think it’s a good idea?”

He shrugs. “Your loss, I guess.”

“The thing is,” she says, “I don’t think Tifa’s going to be a very good guardian if she spends all her time worrying about this guy she had to abandon ’cause he was too proud to let her keep looking after him.”

Jaw clenched, he says nothing.

“So here’s the deal.” Aerith clasps her hands together. “I’ll only let Tifa come with me on my pilgrimage if you come, too.”

He huffs derisively. “Take a look. I’m not cut out to be a guardian.”

“You don’t have to be one,” she says. “Just come with us.”

“Why?”

“Do I really need to spell it out?” She sighs. “If there’s one thing I don’t believe in, it’s people thinking they have to leave the ones they love behind so they’ll be better off, alright? It’s just stupid.”

“The ones they—? Wait,” says Cloud, eyes widening with mortification. “You got the wrong idea.”

“Come on, are you in or not?” asks Aerith. “Either you both come with us, or you both stay here. Those are your options.”

A moment passes while he mulls it over, then another. When he fails to respond, Aerith doesn’t just leave like he assumed she would; she waits, expectant.

(Looking at her, he realizes suddenly why she seemed familiar just now, and it’s not because he caught the blurriest glimpse of her the night before: Her kind yet forceful certainty, and the way she carries herself, all reminds him of his mother. She never let him get away with flimsy half-answers or excuses, either. And that, more than any sort of logic or reason, is what makes his resolve crumble.)

“Fine,” he says, unable to make the selfish choice even though he so badly wants to. It would be good for Tifa to do this, and if that means he has to go, too, then he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. And he owes Aerith anyway—can’t really turn down a request from someone who saved his life. He looks toward Marle, his last bastion of hope. “Only if she lets me.”

“ _Let_ you? I’d kick you out on your ass myself if I could,” says Marle.

“Well, there’s your answer,” Aerith says brightly. “We’re about to go through the Cloister of Trials. After that, we’ll spend the day resting and then leave just after dawn tomorrow. Think you’ll be ready by then?”

He’s been feeling better by the minute, truth be told. He can probably graduate from sitting up to walking by the afternoon, he thinks. The magic she cast on him was regenerative, and all his aches and pains and, yes, even broken bones have slowly ceased to bother him. Still, he says, “Maybe, but I’ll probably slow you down.”

“We’ve made good time up till now anyway,” says Aerith, her optimism unshakable. “A tiny delay won’t hurt.”

“Fine,” he says again.

“Then I’ll see you tonight!” And with that, she leaves in a flurry of red and pink.

What a stupid, ridiculous situation. He isn’t even sure what he’s gotten himself into. Nothing good, probably.

But Marle chuckles, saying, “What did I tell you? All you need is someone who cares enough to be a real pain in someone’s ass for you, even if it’s yours. _Especially_ if it’s yours, in your case.”

“Whatever,” says Cloud. He glances back down at the bowl in his hands, which has yet to become any more appetizing, then sets it down with a sigh.

Just outside of Luca, they hear a rumor from a merchant that the legendary guardian Vincent has been spotted in the city. It doesn’t sound likely in the slightest—no one’s seen Sir Vincent since the Calm first began nearly twenty-three years ago, when he delivered the high summoner’s young child to the gates of Bevelle and then disappeared into the wilderness without a word—but anything is possible. Aerith perks up at the information, bright-eyed as a kid on their birthday.

“We should look for him,” she says. “There’s probably a lot he could teach us, don’t you think?”

Zack doesn’t really have the heart to say that the rumor probably isn’t true, and if it is, they’d still be chasing down a man who’s spent over two decades trying his best not to be found. “Maybe,” he says.

“If he wanted to help anyone else with their pilgrimage, don’t you think he would’ve been doing that already?” says Cloud, who harbors none of the reluctance plaguing Zack. “Bet he just wants to be left alone.”

“No one goes to Luca to be left alone,” says Aerith. “Isn’t that right, Tifa?”

“Hmm?” Tifa looks over distractedly. “Sorry, I thought I saw one of my teammates.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Zack snaps his fingers. “Shouldn’t you tell them about you being a guardian now?”

“Technically, I already withdrew from the team,” she says. “They knew when I left that I probably wasn’t coming back. Not for a while, at least.”

When she says this, Cloud gets that broody look that Zack thinks of as his look-how-I’ve-ruined-Tifa’s-life face. These kids need to have a talk sooner or later, he thinks. Preferably sooner. But Aerith’s already told him to mind his own business. They’ll work things out eventually, she said.

They agree to look around anyway, just to appease Aerith, who insists the guy must be here because he wants to be a part of the world again. But every clue just leads them in circles: The people at the bar saw him by the stadium, the people in the stadium saw him near the theater, the people in line at the theater spotted him having a drink at the bar. It all goes nowhere quickly. Aerith deflates, thanking the bartender with a forced smile.

“It was probably just someone who looked like him,” Tifa says as they leave the bar and walk back out into the square.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” says Aerith. She takes a deep breath, and her next smile is more genuine as she looks around at all of them. “Sorry about that. It was kind of a long shot, huh?”

“It was worth checking out,” says Zack. He takes a deep breath of the fresh air. It’s a nice day, sun shining and sea breeze light and cool. “But I’m kinda glad we didn’t find him, honestly.”

“Oh? How come?” asks Aerith.

“I mean, he gets Lady Lucrecia all the way through her pilgrimage, then drops her kid off with some strangers and bails for twenty years?” Zack huffs. “Who _does_ that?”

“Someone who doesn’t wanna babysit a kid right after their friend dies,” says Cloud.

“Bullshit,” says Zack. “If you care about someone, you do what you know they would’ve wanted. And I doubt she wanted her only kid to be raised by a bunch of monks in Bevelle.” He knows that if he were in that position and it were Aerith’s child, he’d rise to the occasion. Even if the child were another man’s. It’s what you do when a person matters to you, whether or not they’re around anymore to see it. He wouldn’t entrust a responsibility like that to anyone else, wouldn’t forgive himself for giving it up.

“Sometimes, the best thing that you can do is acknowledge you aren’t the right person for the job.”

Zack opens his mouth to protest, then whirls around and sees the person who spoke. It’s a man leaning against the railing, looking like he was taking in a view of the water, maybe. Long black hair, eyes as red as the cloak he’s wearing.

Oh. Wait a second. That’s a familiar description. That matches—

Aerith gasps. “Sir Vincent!” She rushes to bow formally. “We didn’t know you were standing there. I’m so—”

“No apologies,” Vincent says gruffly. His gaze is focused on Zack, unwavering. He doesn’t look a day over thirty, though by now he should be closer to fifty, surely. “You’re a guardian?”

“Yes, sir,” says Zack, a tremor of anxiety running through him that he tries to gulp back. He’d bow, too, but he’s afraid to break eye contact with the man.

Vincent’s eyes dart briefly over to Aerith. “And you care about your summoner?”

He does, but the question that isn’t really a question makes his stomach twist in knots unexpectedly. He just nods, standing as tall as he’s able, which is a not inconsiderable height. But Vincent, who’s slouched lazily where he’s resting against the rail, looks more imposing than Zack will ever be.

“Losing her,” says Vincent, “will change you into something you don’t recognize. If you’re unlucky enough to live that long.” Without pause, he turns to Aerith. “I’m sure you know that Sephiroth is on his pilgrimage as well.”

“I do,” says Aerith.

“If you hope to defeat Sin, you’ll need to get to Zanarkand before he does.”

“I plan to.” She has the same grim determination as always. Unlike Zack, who can feel his hands shaking, she doesn’t seem perturbed by the talk of her death at all. “Are you going to join him, Sir Vincent?”

There’s a pause. “No,” says Vincent. “Those days are behind me. And, well.” He pulls aside his cloak, revealing a gun holstered at his hip. Machina. “Yevon and I have a complicated relationship.”

Beside him, Zack hears Cloud let out a quiet chuckle. A Crusader _would_ find it amusing that a former warrior monk wields a forbidden machina weapon. For his part, though, Zack can only gawk, quietly horrified.

Soon after that, the man takes his leave. Aerith bows once more to his retreating back. Then she keeps staring for a long moment after, saying nothing, her expression inscrutable. Zack wonders if she’s thinking about what Vincent said, or about how Sephiroth, son of the last high summoner, is her rival in their race to defeat Sin. For the briefest moment he allows himself to hope that she’s having second thoughts, and the reminder that a capable adversary is hot on her trail will finally allow her to give up, quit her pilgrimage, go back with him to the archipelago and—

She turns to him, suddenly riddled with grief. “Zack,” she says quietly. “Something about him… isn’t right.” She’s clutching her staff with both hands, grip white-knuckled.

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Apart from his blunt yet cryptic way of speaking, Zack hadn’t sensed anything strange about the guy.

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.” A pause, then she says, louder, “We should get going if we wanna make it to the boat in time.”

She starts walking, and they all follow behind. Then she pauses, lets Zack catch up to her, and reaches her hand out with a reassuring smile. When he takes her hand, his own finally stops trembling, at least for the moment.

Kilika’s changed since Tifa left five years ago. Of course it has—the village was all but destroyed back then, the port reduced to a pile of debris floating on the water. But she looks out at all the little buildings as they approach and realizes she doesn’t even know where her house used to be, or where the school was, or the stretch of pier where she realized she was going to miss Cloud, the boy who’d lived just next door her whole life up to that point. This place is foreign to her, a mystery.

She glances at Cloud to see if he’s as perturbed as she is, only to find he has his eyes closed, and his breathing is slow and labored. There’s a light sheen of sweat on his face. He even looks a bit pale.

An absurd thought occurs to her. “Cloud,” she says carefully, “are you… seasick?”

“No,” he mumbles with obvious effort.

“Cloud…”

“It just happens sometimes, alright? Been like this for a while.” There’s a long pause as he inhales deeply, holds it, then lets it out again with a shudder, shaking his head. “Too much time on land,” he adds, miserable.

She rubs between his shoulders consolingly. What a terrible fate, she thinks, for an island kid to feel sick on the water. She thinks his mom would have a chuckle over it if she were still around. Claudia always did like poking fun good-naturedly at her son. And he made it so easy, getting all flustered and making such a fuss, grumbling and huffing as indignantly as a tiny kid is able. The thought brings a tiny smile to Tifa’s lips.

After the ship docks, the four of them start to walk through the little town. Aerith looks around in awe at the houses on the water, amazed by each building they pass.

“It’s like they’re floating,” she says. “Are they?” She laughs a little. “No, now that I say it, it sounds stupid.”

“She’s from a village in the Calm Lands,” Zack explains. “Water’s a whole new thing for her.”

“There are villages in the Calm Lands?” Tifa asks as Aerith swats Zack’s arm.

“A few,” says Aerith. “We’re spread out pretty far, though. Where I’m from, Gaea’s Cliff, it’s sort of close to Mt. Gagazet, but not the side of it by the main road. I even made friends with some of the Ronso growing up. We’d meet up with them to trade sometimes.”

The only Ronso Tifa’s met have been the players from the Fangs, who aren’t much for conversation. Mostly she just knows they’re all built like they’re made of brick. “Any plan to stop by when we head back north?” she asks.

“I don’t think so,” says Aerith. She reaches up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, and the bangles on her wrist jingle and clank together noisily. “It’s a little out of the way. And… I’ve already said my goodbyes.”

Tifa nods. She won’t press the subject further. She knows what it’s like to not want to revisit a place after you’ve decided to leave. And really, the people who live here now—even the ones she knew—are from a different life, a time before Sin. They’ve all changed, moved on, and likewise the Tifa they knew is gone forever. She says, “What about you, Zack? Where are you from?”

“Gongaga,” he says, “out in the West Islands.”

“Oh!” says Tifa, the exclamation bursting out of her before she can stop it. “That’s—”

“Backwater dump,” says Cloud. It’s the first thing he’s said since they disembarked.

“ _Cloud!_ ”

Zack chortles. “That’s rich coming from a Kilikan.” He offers Tifa an apologetic grin. “No offense.”

“Never said this wasn’t a backwater too,” Cloud replies, shrugging.

Zack laughs again, clapping him on the back. Tifa thinks she sees the beginnings of a smile on Cloud’s face, but it’s gone so quickly she’s not sure whether she imagined it.

Sighing, Aerith says, “Well, I like it here. It’s pretty.” She looks to Tifa. “So, how far is Kilika Temple?”

“Through the woods and up the hill to the east,” says Tifa, pointing. “We can get there in under an hour, as long as we don’t stop or get lost.”

“We won’t get lost,” Cloud scoffs. “Me and you’ve been through these woods a million times.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She smiles. “We can get through this, no problem.”

“Hey, in your defense,” Aerith says gently, “the island’s changed a lot since you left, right?”

Tifa slumps against a tree, groaning.

“Why are there so many paths?” she asks, staring up at the sky as though hoping an answer will rain down. “And who decided we didn’t need any _signs?_ ”

“Definitely changed since we were kids,” Cloud says with a frown. “And there’s a lot more ochu than I remember.”

“No kidding?” says Zack. He’s on the ground, head between his knees, recovering from his latest bout of poisoning. Even with healing magic, it takes a minute for the nauseating effects to wear off. Aerith resists the urge to coo pityingly.

“Let’s just take a few minutes to rest up, then we can start looking again,” says Aerith. “How’s that sound?”

Everyone grunts in reply, thoroughly and utterly and demoralized, lacking all enthusiasm. There’s nothing around them but the mostly-tranquil wilderness of the Kilika Woods, which in any other circumstances might be a welcome sort of peace. Gnats are swarming harmlessly nearby, birds flutter overhead, a frog is ribbiting rhythmically enough to keep time. The flora is lush and vibrant and dense, alive in a way Aerith has hardly ever seen. But it’s still miserable, being stuck here without meaning to. They have places to be. She clucks her tongue. Coming to a decision, she looks around for a clearing large enough to suit her purposes. When she spots one, she skips over to it.

“Time for some problem-solving,” she announces.

She clutches her staff, the battered old thing that used to be her mother’s, silver and polished mythril, and bows her head toward it in a mimicry of prayer. It’s more out of habit than anything; she knows by now how to empty her mind and call on the fayth housed deep inside of her body without ceremony. Magic flares up around her as she calls on it. As she holds one arm out to twirl her staff, she feels the power of the summon take hold, feels it surge up in her and then release, manifesting. She looks toward the sky and sees the glyphs of Yevon shining in the clouds, a signal made of light.

A dark shape bursts down through the glyphs like a stone through a pane of glass, keeps plunging earthward, diving at a lethal speed. It slows just above the woods’ canopy, and the wings that burst forth bring with them a sharp gust that has Aerith shrinking back as she tries to shield her face. She makes a dash for the edge of the clearing just in time as the dragon—large as it is fearsome, its two-tone red and violet wings oddly metallic, like knives with hinges—lands where she’d been standing only seconds before, with a force that shakes the ground under her feet. It lets out a roar that sounds closer to a sigh, stretching its limbs mightily.

“Oh,” Aerith breathes. “Thanks for coming to help.”

“What,” she hears Tifa ask shakily, “is _that?_ ”

“Bahamut,” says Aerith, looking up at the aeon that towers as high as the younger trees. “He was my first aeon, from when I completed my apprenticeship in Bevelle. But I never got to summon him. Until now, I guess.”

“Why not?”

Aerith wishes she could say. It’s just because she’s afraid, really. She has this deep-seated worry that if she gets this one wrong, this too-important ritual, then she isn’t really a summoner, and it will all have been just a hoax, a mistake. When she’s in need she calls on Shiva and Ixion, who feel less sacred, worthy of a reverence that isn’t so daunting. She knows, deep down, that she isn’t a very good summoner because of this terrible fear inside of her. She can’t admit it to anyone, even Zack.

(And she especially can’t confess to a fear that she’d be disappointing a father she’s never known, the man who once kept watch over that very temple where her power was actualized. It’s silly, caring so much about the thoughts and feelings of this shrouded mystery who isn’t even there to give his approval.)

She turns to her friends with a smile and shrugs. “Well, where would you put him?”

As if to agree, Bahamut lets out a rumbling snort.

She asks Bahamut to scout ahead to the temple for them, which takes all of half a minute. Afterward the aeon guards them as they weave through the trees and underbrush, swooping down from the sky with a booming roar to tackle stray ochu, or sending a cascade of elemental spells to rain down on unsuspecting pests. Aerith calls out her thanks every time, and Bahamut replies with a snuffly rumble before taking to the air again. Despite his size, and those shining golden claws and impossibly sharp teeth, there’s something comforting about the dragon’s presence. A feeling of goodness and benevolence and something very pure, like the child she recalls seeing in the Chamber of the Fayth.

“You know you gotta call him off before we get to the temple,” Zack murmurs. “People are gonna freak if they see an eighteen-foot-tall dragon fly by out of nowhere.”

“I know,” says Aerith. “But for now it’s just nice to have him around, you know?”

Zack sighs. He’s right, though; most people don’t see aeons in their day-to-day lives, and the sight of them can be horrifying. It would be one thing if she were running around alongside Ifrit, the patron beast of Kilika, but it’s rare for any summoner to visit the islands after they’ve already made it so far north. It just isn’t the way people do things. Best not to cause trouble.

They reach a bridge, from which the steps that lead up the tall hill to the temple are already visible, looming in wait. Aerith looks up to where Bahamut is hovering over the trees. With each flap of his wings they see a flash of the sun.

She grins, says, “Until next time,” and just like that he soars off into the sky, vanishing. But not gone. The place where his fayth lives in her heart is still there, nestled in comfortably with the others. And somehow, after all this time, she finally feels that debilitating fear start to ebb away, replaced with the certain warmth of understanding.

Of course she can do this. She’s her parents’ daughter, through and through.

At this point, a place like Besaid feels as much like home to Cloud as Kilika does. They’re both strange and devoid of anything that matters to him, so alien as to hold no meaning.

He won’t say as much to Tifa. They haven’t talked about Kilika really at all—not while they were there, and certainly not since they left. But they’ll have to stop in at the port again when they go back to the mainland. Maybe they’ll talk about it then. He hopes not, though.

The truth, really, is that the two of them haven’t talked about much of anything whatsoever. Not to say they don’t _talk_ , but it’s about things that are happening, about the pilgrimage. Idle conversation. It feels safe, neutral, lets him get away with never quite saying anything that matters. He doesn’t have to admit to her that he isn’t sure what he’ll do after this, or even what he’s doing right now, because half the time he feels like excess baggage the rest of them have to deal with and—and for the other half, he gets so lost trying to remember unimportant things that it’s like he’s somewhere else entirely, trapped in a maze where every dead end is a thing he thinks he’s never going to remember. He’ll sit there by the campfire trying to recall his father’s name, his favorite book as a kid, whether his family ever had a white cat or if that was somebody else’s life that’s blurred into his own. There are so many gaps. If he shares any of them, he knows Tifa will worry, and she’s wasted enough energy worrying about him already. The last thing he wants is to upset her more than he already has.

He roams the village of Besaid listlessly. Unlike Kilika, whose temple is far removed from civilization, Besaid’s is practically in the middle of town. The others have gone on to the Cloister of Trials, and Cloud, who doesn’t consider himself a guardian no matter what Aerith says, has nothing to do but wait for them to finish. At least he isn’t stuck in the remote wilderness this time, he supposes.

There’s a Crusader lodge he could go to. Won’t, but could. He changed out of his old uniform at the first available opportunity, so on top of not being a guardian, he also isn’t a soldier. Is he anything? He couldn’t say. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything else that could be stripped away from him now.

He’s in a little shop in a hut, contemplating their stock of potions and ether, when a gruff voice beside him says, “Hey.”

A wild spike of panic shoots through him, along with a hundred thoughts at once. Has he been recognized? Do they know he defected after Operation Mi’ihen? Or is it someone from his past, and when he turns to see who it is he won’t recognize them? He tries desperately to quell the terror that’s seized him and sent his heart galloping frantically, then finally looks.

It’s unlikely, Cloud decides, that he’s ever met this man before. That helps the very smallest bit. He’s tall, impossibly burly, skin the deepest brown and hair cropped close to his scalp. One of his arms is half gone, missing from the elbow down. He’s dressed for warmer weather, but it’s overcast today, gloomy.

“Yeah?” says Cloud.

“You a guardian?”

It’s the first time anyone’s asked him directly. He doesn’t feel like explaining the situation, so he just answers, “Yeah.”

“So why ain’t you with the summoner you swore on your life to protect?” asks the man. There’s a bottle in his remaining hand. Eye drops, looks like.

“Didn’t wanna overcrowd the place.” And he’s sworn no such thing. All he promised to do was follow, and that’s what he’s doing. Well. Not at this very moment, but broadly.

The man grunts, unimpressed. “A guardian’s work,” he says, “is a sacred duty. Maybe you oughta start taking that seriously before it comes back to bite you.”

“Sure.” A case holding plumes of phoenix down catches Cloud’s eye. He wonders if they remembered to stock up back in Kilika or not.

“Hey,” the man barks, causing the shopkeeper to let out a squeal of alarm. “You listenin’ or not?”

Cloud spares him a glance. “Why should I? I don’t even know who you are.”

“Name’s Barret,” says the man, puffing his chest out proudly. “And it’s my ship that brought y’all here from Kilika. Good ol’ _S.S. Myrna._ ”

“Yeah? Thanks for the ride, Captain,” Cloud says dryly. Deciding against buying anything for now, he stuffs his hands in his pockets and starts to leave.

“The hell are you—get back over here!” Barret calls behind him.

Cloud walks out into the main square of the village, then turns to make for the temple. Aerith and the others will probably be done soon. He can just wait by the—

“Will you stop for one damn _second_ and lemme finish?” says Barret, catching him by the shoulder and forcing him to turn. Grumbles something that sounds distinctly like _damn kids_.

“Save the lecture,” says Cloud. “I don’t need to hear about how I’m failing my duty to Yevon.”

Barret narrows his eyes. “Now, that’s a conversation for another day,” he says. “I’m just here to tell you ’bout the summoners going missing.”

“Missing?”

“Whole lot of ’em,” says Barret, nodding. “Heard a rumor the Al Bhed could be responsible.”

The Al Bhed, kidnapping summoners? That would start a holy war if Bevelle caught wind. “They wouldn’t,” says Cloud. Surely they’re just being used as a scapegoat. It feels more plausible than the already-hated Al Bhed going out of their way to earn the scorn of Yevonites everywhere by taking their summoners away.

“Just what I heard, man,” says Barret. “You watch out for that summoner of yours, Mr. Guardian.”

After that last patronizing remark, Barret walks off, leaving Cloud alone with his thoughts in the village square.

He’ll mention it to the others, of course, but it’s probably nothing. Just a rumor based on paranoid nonsense.

“We could stop here for a little bit this time,” says Aerith, “if you need to track down any family or friends, or…?”

The rest of the offer dies on her tongue as Tifa shakes her head and Cloud, as usual, doesn’t say a single thing. Zack thinks he understands. If not for his parents, he wouldn’t have anything tying him to Gongaga anymore, either. All the islands in the southwestern sea bear the brunt of Sin’s fury at one point or another.

The next ship to Luca won’t leave until morning regardless, so they’re here for the night. The innkeeper offers to put them up for free, but Aerith politely refuses, setting a handful of coins on the counter.

“Three rooms, if that’s okay,” she says with an apologetic grin.

It feels wasteful, since they could just as easily get away with only two—women in one, men in the other—but Zack isn’t about to complain. And neither is the innkeeper, with how much gil Aerith just handed her.

They retire early to their room, which smells like sandalwood and those pink flowers that were all over the woods the first time they were here. Zack sets his sword carefully by the wall, propping it up against a cupboard, while Aerith just puts her staff down on the floor by the bed, careless. (It’s sturdy, she always tells him, and old anyway. Why bother treating it like it’s fragile? And he knows it’s not his place to tell her how she should treat her mother’s keepsake, so he doesn’t push it.)

There’s a routine Aerith has when she goes to bed, or perhaps a ritual, and right now he finds himself pausing his task of unloading their packs to watch her do it, mesmerized. Boots off. Bangles and rings set aside. Bow taken out of her hair, folded over and over, then set beside the jewelry. Obi undone, folded too, set in its own little space. When they camp, she leaves her dress on. They are not camping now. She undoes the clasps in the back and lets the dress fall to the floor, steps out of it, picks it up and begins folding that, too. Once everything is placed carefully where it belongs—everything but the staff, lying exactly where she dropped it in the same haphazard spot—she sits on the edge of the bed in her underclothes and takes the long braid out of her hair, letting it all fall in waves over her shoulders.

While she combs through the tangles in her hair with her fingers, he goes about taking off his armor, boots, gloves. He doesn’t set everything in careful, orderly places like she does, just drops it all wherever he thinks he’ll remember to find it again later.

“You know,” says Aerith, looking absently toward the shuttered window, still raking her fingers through pesky knots and tangles all the while, “places like this make me a little homesick.”

“Yeah?” Leaving his clothes more or less in a pile, he joins her on the smallish bed, which clearly wasn’t made with anyone as tall as Zack in mind. “How come?”

“I just never realized Spira was so full of different places and people,” she says. “I guess I never really appreciated home until now.”

Home. The one place in Spira she won’t go back to. The place she may never see again.

“That’s how it goes,” he says. “Y’know, I didn’t think Gongaga was anything special till Sin nearly wiped it off the map.”

She hums. Doesn’t say anything else. Just keeps looking toward the window, where the last light of the setting sun peeks through. Not really frowning, but not happy, either. Her hands are still moving, combing gently.

He captures one slow-moving hand and she finally stills, turns. She looks at him with eyes that beg him to understand what she needs without having to say it. So he kisses her, and she laces their hands together, sighs into his mouth. He wonders to himself how much time they still have, and whether he can commit the feel of her to memory before it’s too late, then pushes the thoughts quickly away.

The wrecked machina on the bank of the Moonflow sparks threateningly, then starts to pop and smoke like a dud firework.

“Well.” Tifa looks around at the group. “That’s… one kidnapping attempt thwarted?”

Aerith’s on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest, shivering and coughing while Zack rubs her arms to try to warm her up. She can’t swim, as they discovered when the machina that held her captive began to malfunction. Tifa had been busy fighting the thing off, and Zack, with all his heavy armor, was in no shape to get in the water, so the duty had fallen on Cloud, who dove in from the shoopuf carriage with hardly a pause. Now he’s wringing out his shirt with a sullen frown, his normally tall, spiky hair hanging limp.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he says, glaring thoughtfully at a point on the ground. “Why would the Al Bhed do something they know Yevon would give them hell for?”

“Maybe they—” Aerith starts, then cuts off with a coughing fit. After it subsides, she says, “Maybe they think they know a better way.”

“They don’t,” Cloud replies sharply. “We tried their way, and look where it got us.”

That’s right. Operation Mi’ihen used forbidden machina from the Al Bhed, along with all the manpower of the Crusaders, to try to take down Sin. And from what the survivors said, it didn’t even put a dent in the thing. All they did was piss it off, if Sin even knows rage.

In a desperate attempt to change the subject and stop talking about the failed operation, Tifa says, “Maybe they don’t want us to get rid of Sin at all.”

Zack groans. “That’s the last thing we need. An Al Bhed Sin-worshiping cult.”

“Not worship,” she says quickly. “What if they think… by trying to fight Sin, we’re making things worse for ourselves, and that’s why Sin comes back?” All at once she feels stupid, anxious. “I don’t know. It’s just a guess.”

“Whatever they want,” Aerith says with a heavy sigh, “I hope they try asking nicely next time.”

They continue down the road to Guadosalam, their clothes slowly drying in the afternoon sun as they walk. Tifa, for her part, is dying to get to an inn. Her blitzball uniform might be water-resistant, but her undergarments are decidedly not. She hangs back a bit and keeps trying in vain to inconspicuously adjust her underwear and sports bra to avoid chafing, which hasn’t accomplished much of anything beyond Zack glancing back and stifling a snicker at her awkward hop from one foot to the other.

She’s so caught up in her misery over her damp clothes she doesn’t immediately notice that Cloud’s fallen in step with her. It’s not until he speaks up that she realizes he’s there.

“You did a good job, you know.”

Surprised, she looks over at him, but he’s staring straight ahead down the path. It’s so rare for him to choose to talk to her that her mind goes blank, and all she can think to say is, “Huh?”

“Fighting that machina on your own,” he says. “Most people couldn’t do something that.”

“It wasn’t a big deal.” Made jittery by the praise, she hears her voice go up an embarrassing octave. “Honestly, I’ve had marks in blitzball games who were tougher than that.”

He looks to her now, eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”

“I dislocated my shoulder tackling a Ronso once,” she admits, sheepish. “And, um, sprained my wrist. Not my proudest moment.”

The traces of amusement that had floated up to his features disappear in an instant. He knits his brow. “What about now? Are you hurt?”

There’s a very small, irrational part of Tifa that wonders what he would do if she said yes. Would he demand to look at the wound, fuss over her incessantly, hover by her bedside while she recuperated? It’s a ridiculous fantasy. She isn’t even sure where it came from. She tries to will away the flush rising to her cheeks and says, “No, just tired.”

He nods, and they hit a lull. She struggles to find something else to say. It seems like there are a thousand things on the tip of her tongue when he’s off brooding silently, things she would tell him if she had the chance, but now that they’re here, walking side by side, all those ideas feel trite and silly.

To her amazement, though, Cloud breaks the silence again: “Sorry I couldn’t help you out.”

“What?” She blinks. “Of course you helped! You saved Aerith, and that’s what we—”

“Could’ve saved her sooner if I’d been down there with you,” he says.

“Cloud,” she says, then stops, unsure of what the right thing to say even is.

While Aerith’s magic healed much of the damage to his body and drove the sickness out of him, Cloud is still recovering, and it’s a slow process. His body is weaker than it should be, he tires easily when they walk for too long, and ailments from stray fiends hit him harder than they do everyone else. He isn’t in any shape to do battle the way that Tifa and Zack do, and from the somber look on his face, he seems to realize as much.

An idea strikes Tifa suddenly. “Hey, why don’t you ask Aerith to teach you magic?”

He makes a face like he just smelled something terrible. “Magic?”

“Yeah! Anyone can learn, right?” The more she thinks about it, the more exciting the prospect is. “You could fight with us if you wanted, and you wouldn’t need to worry about aggravating your injuries.”

He continues making that face, that expression of acute disgust. “Waving a staff around isn’t really my thing,” he says.

“Staves are just for summoners,” Aerith pipes up ahead of them. “You don’t need them to cast regular spells.” Looking back over her shoulder, she shoots them a grin. “Sorry, nosy.”

“What do you think, Aerith?” asks Tifa. “Would it work?”

“I’m not very good with black magic, honestly, so I wouldn’t be the best teacher,” says Aerith. “I’m sure the Guado could help, though. A lot of them are mages.”

“We could stay there for a while,” Zack says immediately. He’ll jump on any opportunity to slow down or take a detour. Tifa suspects sometimes that it’s why he so readily accepted Cloud into the group: He hoped it would delay the pilgrimage. It isn’t hard to imagine why. “Y’know, just while you get things figured out.”

Now, rather than disgusted, Cloud just seems uncomfortable, arms crossed and shoulders hunched and frown a bit deeper than usual. Like this, he looks small, back to being that haughty and shy kid Tifa used to know. She thinks it’s the exact face and stance he had when they were little and his mom asked her mom if she could babysit for just one afternoon. She remembers him hiding behind Claudia’s skirt, bashful and silent, even though he and Tifa were neighbors and he was nearly a full year older. Or maybe that’s just how Tifa sees it now, looking back. Memories are strange things. _Was_ he shy, or is he so quiet now that she imagines it’s how he’s always been?

She puts a hand on his arm and he startles, twitching but not pulling away. Ignoring the inexplicable fluttering in her middle, she says, “You don’t have to. It’s just an idea.” Then she smiles, hoping it’s reassuring and not as horribly, mortifyingly fond as it feels.

He holds her gaze for a long moment, then nods. Not a yes, but not a no. She’ll count that as a success.

The Farplane is just the same as it was the day before. The waterfalls are rushing thunderously, the wildflowers in the field below sway in the nonexistent breeze, and the moon glows eerily in the very center of the sky, a beacon. Swirling through the air, the pyreflies let out a gentle hum of song, a mourning call, and the iridescent light that trails after them is beautiful here in a way that it’s never been in the living world, even at the Moonflow. At the very edge of the platform, Aerith just sits, taking in the ethereal features of the woman in front of her.

Zack wanders over eventually. He didn’t come along yesterday—not ready, he’d said—but he’s here today, looking on at the images of friends he’s lost. (He knows it’s not _really_ them, he insisted earlier, but it’s just the memory of them that’s hard to face. Aerith understands.)

“Sister?” he asks, taking a seat beside Aerith on the rocky platform, cross-legged. “You look just like her.”

Aerith shakes her head. “Zack, this is my mom,” she says.

“Your mom?” He does a double-take. “But—I’ve met your mom. What—”

“I’ve lived with Elmyra since I was little,” she says, “but she isn’t my birth mother.” She looks up at Ifalna, at her flowing hair, her proud stance, the small glint of rebellion in her eyes. “She took me in when my real mom died on her pilgrimage.”

“Oh.” Zack shifts a little. “What was she like? Your birth mom.”

“Kind. Pretty. At our house in Bevelle, she grew these flowers you can only find by Lake Macalania in the spring. She always smelled like them.” And she was sad, too, more often than Aerith likes to remember. She doesn’t say that. “The staff I use was hers. She had a new one made for herself before she left.”

He takes her hand in his own warm, callused one. “What about your dad?”

“I never knew him. See?” She looks up at the empty space by Ifalna. “The pyreflies don’t even have a memory to go off of. But he was the high priest at the temple in Bevelle before I was born. That’s how they met.”

“He died?”

“I think so. She never told me what happened to him, just that he was gone.”

“Maybe he isn’t here because he’s still alive.”

“Maybe,” she says, mostly to humor him.

“I’m sorry,” says Zack, and when she looks at him he has those big, earnest eyes again. All sweetness. A giant puppy dog. If the circumstances were different, she thinks she could go on adoring him with all her heart for a good, long time.

“Don’t be,” she says, unable to hold back a grin. “I’m not upset. Really.”

Ifalna, an image of the dead made up of pyreflies wandering the Farplane, doesn’t say anything through this whole exchange. She’s like a picture in a frame, vacant and unmoving, perfectly frozen in her state of frightening beauty. But even if she isn’t here, standing before her in this form, she’s still listening, Aerith thinks. The departed are still out there somewhere. They have to be.

So she talks to the memory of Ifalna anyway: “Mom, this is Zack. He’s my guardian, and…” Even now, her heart skips, thumping a wild, erratic rhythm. “A guy I really love. I think you would like him. He’s kind of loud sometimes and he isn’t funny at all, but—”

“Hey,” he protests.

“But he takes care of me,” she finishes, “and he has a good heart. And he…” She leans into him now, takes a deep breath, grasps at his hand with both of hers and holds tightly. “He doesn’t want me to complete my pilgrimage. And even though I haven’t told him, I’m really grateful.”

He swears softly and kisses the top of her head, burying his face in her hair. She can feel him shaking.

“But I have to,” she says quietly. “Before you left, you told me, ‘Aerith, I wish I could stay and watch you grow up, but I want to give you a world without Sin. That’s how much I love you.’ I didn’t get it for a long time, but now I do.” She closes her eyes. “The people I love… I want to give them a world without Sin, too, if I can.” Even if it’s unfair, she doesn’t say. Even if there are embers of resentment glowing in her still over the loss of a mother who shouldn’t have died. Even if she knows how cruel and distasteful of a consolation it really is, because noble acts don’t seem noble to those who feel the loss inherent in them. She’s still asking him to accept something terrible. She just has to hope he understands why she’s doing it, where it’s coming from.

The sound of Zack’s uneven breath is louder than the waterfalls or pyrefly song. She keeps holding onto his hand—large and rough and covered in tiny scars, but still gentle—and lets him cry silently against her, as long as he needs to.

When she opens her eyes again, the ghost of Ifalna is still there, staring blankly.

Is it demeaning to be tutored by a child? A little, yeah. But as far as kids go, Cloud supposes Chadley isn’t too bad. Not a brat, and not a condescending prick like the rest of the Guado, either. Just kind of weird, which isn’t exactly a crime.

“Excellent work,” Chadley says when the water spell hits its target. He jots something down in the notebook he carries, scrawling at such a speed it seems impossible he could be making anything but scribbles. “Your rate of accuracy has greatly increased since this morning.”

Cloud grunts. Realistically, he knows it would take a long time to develop real, meaningful skill at something like this. Most mages have to train for years to become proficient in the art of spellcasting. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating, though, to see the snail’s pace of his progress.

It doesn’t help that he lacks a point of focus for his magic. Most human mages have foci, Chadley explained; rods or staves or wands, even dolls imbued with magical energy. But Guado don’t use foci, apart from the small few summoners they’ve produced. It’s to do with their relationship with the Farplane, the spirits and energies of the dead. It comes to them as easily as drawing breath.

And it’s not as though Cloud thinks he’s too good to do things the orthodox way, or that he needs to prove a point to anyone. It just doesn’t feel right. He has no experience wielding enchanted weapons, and now doesn’t feel like the time to start.

He also really, _really_ doesn’t want to carry around a moogle doll.

Adjusting the odd little spectacles he wears, Chadley says, “If stationary targets are proving unsatisfying for you, we could look for fiends on the road to the Moonflow instead.”

Cloud thinks it over for a moment. “Sure,” he says, “why not.”

“First, you should take a serving of ether,” says Chadley. “According to my calculations, you can only cast two more spells before your mana has been exhausted.”

He holds out a vial filled with a shimmering blue liquid, which Cloud accepts reluctantly. He takes out the stopper and knocks back the whole drink, swallowing with a grimace. It has a cloying taste that hits the tongue hard and lingers. Not sweet but—the other one. The thing that lemons are. (Sour. He thinks of it sometime later, after revisiting all kinds of desserts in his head. He never liked the ones with lemon, but his mom loved them.) Worse, it makes everything sharp for a moment, too clear and vivid and intense. It doesn’t quite give him a headache, though it’s something adjacent to one.

The north bank road is mostly peaceful, but every path has fiends, and this is no exception. A bunyip charges out from the bushes, beady little eyes watchful. Cloud remembers Tifa fretting over bruised, split knuckles after she and Zack fought one days prior. No wonder, when the little terrors are covered by such a thick shell.

“Bunyips are susceptible to both ice and water,” Chadley rattles off like a personified textbook. “Their resistance to magic is high, however, so you may need to cast multiple spells to finish it off.”

“Got it,” says Cloud. He narrows his eyes. “Hey. Aren’t these things pretty strong?”

“By my estimates, it could knock you unconscious with one hit and kill you with another,” says Chadley. “I hope that answers your question.”

“…Yeah, thanks.”

Luckily, Cloud manages to avoid death via gruesome battery, albeit narrowly. He dives out of the way of the charging beast, and with an acute focus made possible only by the adrenaline coursing through him, he casts two successive blizzard spells, hitting it dead-on and freezing it in place.

Chadley strolls over to examine the bunyip, peering down thoughtfully and taking more notes in his journal. “Interesting,” he says in that strangely mild way he says everything.

“What is?” asks Cloud.

“You were able to cast the same spell twice with very little pause, and without sacrificing magical potency,” says Chadley, still taking notes. “In order words, though your magic is still fairly weak, you can cast more efficiently than even a mage of intermediate skill.”

“Oh,” says Cloud, too confused to muster up any feelings of pride at the comment. “Cool.”

“If you can replicate the move, I would be interested to see if you can cast two different elemental spells consecutively.” He stops writing and steps agilely back. “Preferably soon, as it’s beginning to thaw.”

This time, Cloud tries using blizzard and then water, but it manifests as a blizzard each time. The bunyip falls, at least, dissipating into a cloud of pyreflies. He can’t help but be a little disappointed as he watches them dance into the air.

“Dual-casting different spells is a highly advanced technique,” says Chadley, unfazed. “If you had managed it this early in your training, I would be shocked, to say the least.” He closes his notebook. “At this rate, however, you may be able to progress to second-tier elemental spells in just a few days.”

“Seriously?” Cloud stares, unsure he heard correctly. “But you just said my magic was weak.”

Chadley nods. “Yes, in its current state your mana is much lower than the average mage, which is expected for a novice. The lack of focal point is also inhibiting your abilities. Yet my calculations show an almost exponential rate of development already, which I would attribute to your strength of will and drive to improve.”

Yevon only knows what exactly Chadley could be calculating in that book of his. Still, Cloud feels an unfamiliar churning in his insides, one that isn’t rooted in shame or anxiety for once but… something good, maybe. A pleased little feeling that he might tentatively call excitement. Maybe it wasn’t such a far-fetched suggestion after all. Maybe Tifa knew something he didn’t. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Chadley, with his vine-like hair, his unsettling crystalline eyes, his too-stately robes, _does_ look excited, at least as much as a proper, clinical sort can be. The energy radiating off of him is almost tangible, like he’d be vibrating with it if he were any less dignified and composed. He says with an unmistakable eagerness, “You should know that the only other humans I’ve met with this high an aptitude for magic have all been summoners.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s really my thing,” says Cloud.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” says Chadley. “It would be a waste of a perfectly good mage.”

And Cloud doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.

Up to this point, their party hadn’t been certain when they would leave Guadosalam. There’s Cloud’s training to consider, and the delay of Aerith’s pilgrimage, and the Guado’s fondness for Aerith herself, listens attentively to stories from the Guado elders, shows a genuine interest in their culture, and has even helped nurture the plants in their nursery. But after two weeks, the moment finally arrives when Zack realizes, without an ounce of doubt, that they need to go.

It’s the day that Sephiroth returns.

Despite his not being a full-blooded Guado, Lord Sephiroth’s status as the high summoner’s son has earned him the standing of a prince. The manor at the very center of the capital belongs to him, and the rest of the Guado speak of him with a hushed, fearful reverence. Even the elders—the ones who, according to Zack’s history teachers, once called the young lord and his mother “half-breeds”—bow their heads deferentially when his name crosses their lips.

Zack’s met the guy before—or not _met_ , but occupied a space with, at least. He was stationed along the Highbridge not even two years ago when Sephiroth came to Bevelle, flanked by an armed escort. He recalls with perfect clarity the coldness of the other man’s acid-green eyes, the ever-present smirk on his mouth, like he knew something terrible and it gave him the smallest thrill to keep it secret. At the time, it had felt like an unfair judgment, prejudice without any sort of foundation, and Zack had harbored a quiet shame about it for weeks.

Then, months later, word got around that Sephiroth had killed one of his own diplomats over a perceived insult. The maesters of Bevelle did nothing about it, of course; Guado deal with Guado problems, and even if Sephiroth shares only a quarter of their blood, they’ve claimed him as one of their own. It was swept quickly under the rug. When the announcement came that he was undergoing apprenticeship to become a summoner, everyone seemed to forget about the incident entirely. Brave, they call him now. Selfless.

Zack knows better. He knows what he saw in that man’s eyes. He doesn’t think there’s a selfless bone in that body. But if someone like that wants to sacrifice their life for the greater good, Zack isn’t about to stop them.

Aerith is in the Farplane again. Not visiting this time, but learning from the elders about their history. Zack had declined to join her, instead waiting by the entrance and taking a whetstone to his tarnished sword. When he spies a line of Guado guardians and a flash of silver hair passing under the bridge to the Farplane, he quickly reconsiders, packing up his things and stumbling through the entrance.

Some purple-haired old man is droning on about Guado conceptions of the nature of the fayth to Aerith, who looks more fascinated by this than anyone should be. When Zack jogs over, she smiles at him briefly before looking back to the lecturing elder.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Zack lies, “but there’s, uh, a matter that requires the lady summoner’s urgent attention. Now,” he adds.

The old man huffs indignantly, then waves a large, claw-like hand. “Go on, then.”

“What’s—sorry!” Aerith calls as Zack drags her away. “I’ll come back later!”

“There’s not gonna be a later,” Zack mutters once they’ve reached the gate.

At the top of the stairs, he lets go of her hand and they begin to quickly descend. “Why?” asks Aerith. “Did something happen?”

“Your best friend is in town.”

“My what?”

There are guards waiting by the entrance. Zack bites back a curse. “You’re about to find out,” he says. “Stay behind me.”

The grim-faced guards say nothing as the two of them walk by. Once he and Aerith have passed through the archway back into Guadosalam, though, Zack hears the Guado step through after them, blocking their path to the Farplane. With a line of guards in front as well, they’re caged in from either side. Zack has to bite down on his tongue to keep from saying something indecent. Just behind him, he hears Aerith suck in a sharp breath.

Before them, the imposing figures part, stepping to either side to reveal the illustrious lord himself. Unlike the other Guado, who dress modestly and in soft shades—green, yellow, cerulean, earthy brown—he’s clad all in black, his robes falling open in an elongated V to expose his torso in a way that feels indecent. His already broad shoulders are accentuated by stiff pauldrons, and the leather gloves he wears do little to disguise his unsettlingly long, pointed fingers. In one hand he holds his staff—no, not a staff: a polearm, the top of it a sharp point decorated with inky feathers. He looks less like a summoner than an executioner, Zack thinks.

“Lady Aerith,” says Sephiroth, looking past Zack like he isn’t even there. “If I’d known you were visiting, I would have returned home sooner.” His voice is low and soft, but there’s a menacing quality to it, the subtlest note of threat.

Aerith is quiet for a moment. Zack looks back at her over his shoulder and sees that she’s clenching her jaw, her gaze full of fire. She meets his eye and gives the barest nod. Against his better judgment, Zack steps to the side.

She bows, though it’s a stiff motion, her usual enthusiasm gone. “It’s my fault, my lord,” she says, the words coming out stilted. “I should have sent word.”

“No matter.” His gaze flicks to Zack, lazy and indifferent. “Is this your guardian?”

“One of them, yes.”

“Hmm.” He looks away again. The dismissal in the gesture couldn’t be clearer. It’s enough to get Zack’s blood boiling. “How much longer are you staying?”

“We’re leaving tonight,” says Zack.

“Oh?” Sephiroth’s mouth curls in a predatory way, the same as Zack remembers. “Braving the Thunder Plains at night?”

“You’re right,” says Aerith. She gets a hand on Zack’s wrist, and her grip is iron-like. “We should wait until morning. No reason not to, right?”

The smirk grows wider. “Exactly,” says Sephiroth. Then, “You’re welcome to come to dinner at the manor. I’ve heard they’re having a feast to celebrate my homecoming.”

“We’ll consider it, thank you,” Aerith says before Zack has the chance to run his mouth. “I’m sorry, but we really need to get going. It was”—there’s the slightest pause here, an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation—“an honor to speak with you again.” She releases Zack’s hand for a moment to bow again. Reluctantly, Zack follows suit and bows as well.

“Of course,” says Sephiroth. “Well, if I don’t see you before you leave, good luck on your pilgrimage.” He looks to Zack again. “And good luck to you, too.”

Without another word, he brushes past, his entourage marching swiftly behind. Summoner and guardian watch him go, silent and still.

A moment passes, then Aerith’s grip is back, softer this time. “Come on,” she mutters. “I don’t wanna be here when he gets back.”

He lets her drag him away, feeling strangely like there’s something about what just happened that she should spell out for him but not knowing quite what it is.

In a word, the Macalania Woods are cold. In another word: pretty. But that’s a secondary thought to Tifa, who wishes desperately that she’d thought to pick up a coat before now. She doesn’t even want to think what Gagazet will be like.

As if Yevon himself is trying to spite her, they’re ambushed by a chimera, which hurls a ball of fire at her that singes a chunk of her hair, narrowly missing the side of her face. Gritting her teeth, she says, “Let’s go,” launching herself at the creature.

Her new gloves are reinforced with metal knuckles, and as her fist strikes the lion head with a sickening _crack_ , she mentally thanks the vendor who persuaded her to buy them. The chimera roars. When it makes a grab for her with its claws, she darts quickly out of reach, making room for Zack to swing his sword down into its flesh.

“Keep it up!” she hears Aerith shout. A second later, a ball of fiery light materializes in front of Tifa. A spell to ward away fire. Kind of late, she thinks, but still appreciated.

The rest of the battle passes without incident. Afterward, they sit down on dense tree roots for a short break. Zack takes a drink from his waterskin, Aerith heals Tifa’s bruises (though not, unfortunately, the scorched chunk of her hair), and Cloud—

“You could help next time instead of sulking, you know,” Aerith says to him.

“I’m not sulking,” Cloud replies, staring off into the distance sulkily.

“Uh-huh. Of course you’re not.” She rolls her eyes. “You were so excited to start using your magic, and now you’re throwing a fit because you think the weapon your tutor gave you is _embarrassing_.”

“It’s not a weapon,” he says, then somehow looks even more irate. “Whatever.”

“Coulda been way worse, man,” says Zack. “At least he didn’t give you, like, a pupu.”

Cloud just glares wordlessly at him.

Her wounds now healed, Tifa walks over to the root where Cloud is perched and sits next to him. “You mind if I take a look?” she asks.

“Go ahead.” He nudges his pack with his foot.

She opens the bag, rummages around for a moment, feels her hand close on something soft and plush. Careful as she can, she pulls out the stuffed Cait Sith doll. It has little cloth boots, a tiny plastic crown on its head, and a red handkerchief tied around its neck like a cape. Its lifeless eyes look a bit dopey, and its tongue is perpetually sticking out.

“I think it’s cute,” she says softly, “but I know that you hate cute things. Except for chocobos,” she adds when he opens his mouth to object.

“I don’t like cats,” he says, then bristles when she giggles.

“I know. It’s probably my fault,” she admits. “My cat, Daisy, scratched you when you tried to pet her. I remember seeing you cry and just feeling terrible.”

He frowns. “Your cat?”

“Well, my dad’s, I guess. We offered to let your mom have first pick of the kittens maybe a year later, but she said you didn’t want anything to do with them.” She stifles another giggle against her hand. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.”

“A white cat,” Cloud says quietly, as though to himself. She doesn’t understand the look of comprehension that flickers across his face then, but it’s not her place to pry regardless.

“Well.” She holds out the Cait Sith doll. “How about a black cat, to turn your luck around?”

He takes the doll from her with a sigh. “Maybe.”

“Cloud,” she starts, pausing to look back over her shoulder at their companions. Zack and Aerith are a short way down the trail, caught in their own hushed conversation. She lowers her voice anyway. “I promise none of us think less of you for this. We just don’t want you to hold yourself back over something so… so…”

“Stupid?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head obstinately. “It’s not stupid to care about what other people think, it’s just… normal. Everyone does it.” She searches for the right words but doesn’t find them. She settles for, “But you don’t have to worry about that with us. We all care about you. We want you to just be yourself.”

“We,” he echoes, skeptical. “You sure about that?”

“Fine, I won’t speak for anyone else,” she says. “But _I_ care about you. And if this… magical cat doll can help you do something that makes you feel good and productive, I think you should use it. I just want you to be happy,” she tells him, pleading.

He stares at her, still frowning, then looks down at the doll in his hands. In this moment she wishes they had whatever magical connection Aerith and Zack have, where they can exchange a look and just know what the other is thinking and feeling, comfort each other with the barest touch. She knows that it comes from an intimacy so deep they’re just one heart in two bodies, but she _wants_ it, even if it’s stupid to want something that profound with someone who hardly seems to care that she exists. Even if it’s foolish to love someone who so clearly doesn’t want to be loved.

Oh. _Oh_. Does she love him? She’s never thought about it. She’s fond of him, yes, and more protective than she really should be, but she can’t say how much of that is born of a need not to lose anything or anyone else. Doesn’t know, either, how much of what she feels is just residual, leftover from when they were younger and she realized she cared about the boy who lived next door more than she thought. _Does_ she love him, or is she just afraid of losing him?

When Cloud finally speaks again, he confesses, “Feels weird to say, but I’m actually pretty good at it. This magic stuff.”

“Yeah?” A grin spreads over her lips. “That’s really great.”

“That kid, Chadley, even said I could be a summoner. Probably,” he adds. “We didn’t test for it or anything.”

And just like that, Tifa stops breathing, the smile dropping right off her face. The coldness in her limbs and the pit of her stomach isn’t like the kind that had her shivering before, but a heavy, vacant sort of cold. She inhales and it’s a pathetic, shuddering little thing that doesn’t fill her lungs at all.

She doesn’t know what noise she makes, but something makes him glance up at her in alarm. “Tifa?”

“You can’t,” she says. She doesn’t know if he’ll understand what she means, but it’s all she can manage just now. One more syllable and she’ll break, a glass jar tipping over.

He stares uncomprehendingly at first, but then seems to realize. “I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

She nods weakly. It must not be a good enough response, though, from the faint panic in his eyes. He opens his mouth, looks back down at the doll, mutters, “Shit,” and all but tosses it aside before pulling Tifa into his arms and clutching her tightly.

It’s so sudden she freezes in shock. When does he ever touch her, let alone like this? How terrified must she have looked to compel him to react this way? Then, alongside all her questions and worries, a scattering of thoughts: His shirt is soft. He smells warm. He isn’t very good at hugging. She’d like to touch him more. Oh.

“I mean it,” he says, quiet but firm. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

What an odd thing to say. But maybe it’s exactly what she needed to hear to get her thoughts unstuck from whatever trap they’ve fallen into. Feelings muddled and confused and heart racing, she mumbles, “Too tight.”

“What? Oh.” He lets go quickly. When he pulls away from her his face is so pink it’s almost glowing. “Sorry.”

“You’re sweet,” she says, not really knowing if that’s true. It feels true right now, at least. She thinks she’s probably a little flushed, just like he is, but that’s not important. “Thank you.”

“Anyway.” Flustered, he slides off the tree root and goes to pick up the doll, brushing the dirt and leaves off of it. “I’ll give this thing a try. No guarantees, though.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” she says.

He seems to hesitate, mouth opening and closing like a fish. He says, “Sorry I made you worry.”

“You didn’t _make_ me,” she says. “I worry about you because I want to.”

Then he says, “Oh,” softly, a quiet revelation.

“Alright, you two,” Aerith calls, “time to get moving!”

“You heard her, lovebirds,” Zack adds.

And while he normally responds to Zack’s teasing with his own snide retorts, Cloud doesn’t say anything this time. His cheeks are still flushed and he won’t meet Tifa’s eye as he packs up and starts walking. She wonders with an anxious little thrill if he realized the same thing just now as she did, and soon it’s all she can think about as they start walking again.

The girl couldn’t be older than sixteen. Aerith opts to set her pettiness aside for now and crouches down next to the teenager. “Here,” she says, “let me help.”

“ _E’s veha_ ,” the girl mumbles, batting Aerith’s hands away. “ _Ku raym ouin puovneahtc_.”

Aerith shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you.”

“ _Dryd’c palyica ouin baubma yna cdibet yht ihatilydat_.”

“She’s a con artist,” says Cloud. “Wants us to think she doesn’t speak our language.”

“ _Yccruma_.” She sticks her tongue out at him. “Why’s it even matter? Not talking to you jerks anyway.”

If she hadn’t just tumbled out of a machina contraption and proceeded to let out what sounded like a string of obscenities in a foreign language, Aerith wouldn’t have taken this girl for an Al Bhed at all. Her eyes and hair are dark, irises lacking that distinct swirl. She’s dressed the part, though, with her warm-weather clothes and the goggles hanging around her neck.

“You did attack us,” says Aerith. “I think we have a right to know why.”

The girl huffs. She looks around at all four of them, then back at her wrecked machina that’s slowly rolling back into a hole in the ice, and seems to reconsider. “Yeah, fine.” She stumbles to her feet. The loose snow she’d been sitting in starts to fall from her backside. “Can we go somewhere that isn’t cold as balls first?”

Her name, they learn, is Yuffie. Not Al Bhed by blood, but through adoption. Her birth family were seafarers, making their living out on fishing boats in the middle western ocean.

“After Sin attacked,” she says, then pauses. “No, it didn’t even attack. Just… passed through. The Al Bhed found me when I washed up on Bikanel, but.” She shakes her head, staring down into her cup of tea. “As for why I had to fight you, I was just trying to protect your summoner.”

“Think you got things a little twisted there, kiddo,” says Zack. He’s seated between Aerith and Yuffie in the room they’ve taken up at the travel agency, as if to shield Aerith from the unarmed and shivering teenage girl covered in three layers of blankets. “ _We’re_ the ones protecting her. From _you_.”

“ _Oui tuh’d kad ed_.” Yuffie sighs. “We’re just trying to save the summoners from going on their pilgrimage. They shouldn’t have to die.”

“But you’re taking them against their will,” says Tifa.

“Well, yeah,” says Yuffie. “Have _you_ ever tried telling a summoner not to throw their life away?” She snorts. “You’d have better luck talking to a brick wall.”

Zack flinches bodily. Aerith feels a pang of guilt. She knows he’s meant well all this time, and she hasn’t resented him for it at all. He cares enough to still be here by her side, even if he doesn’t agree with what she’s doing, and that counts for something.

“But if it’s for their own good,” says Zack, “I guess that’s… not so bad, right?” He peers around at the others. Not Aerith, though. Of course not.

Tifa shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “I think,” she says slowly, “it’s one thing to not want a summoner to go on their journey. But you can’t… _stop_ them. It goes against the teachings of Yevon. It’s heresy.”

“ _Vilg_ Yevon,” Yuffie spits. “If Yevon wants people to die, maybe they shouldn’t follow him and his stupid teachings!”

A thick silence falls over the room. It may be an Al Bhed establishment, but those are still dangerous words, enough to make Aerith’s blood run cold. Zack and Tifa are looking around anxiously, as though afraid that some passerby will have materialized in the doorway and overheard the entire conversation. But Cloud doesn’t look perturbed at all; he has a considering look, brow furrowed and arms crossed.

“So how do the Al Bhed think we should defeat Sin if we don’t let summoners complete their pilgrimage?” he asks.

“Hell if I know,” says Yuffie. “I’m just a kid. You think they tell me all their plans?”

“You’ve just been gathering up all these summoners and holding them prisoner,” he says, “and you didn’t even bother asking the higher-ups what’s supposed to happen next?”

“Well.” Yuffie sniffs. “I mean. Yeah?”

“ _Tispycc_ ,” he says derisively.

“Hey!” She practically jumps in her seat, pointing a finger at him accusingly while some of her tea sloshes out of the cup and onto the pile of blankets on her lap. “Don’t insult me in my own language!”

Aerith raises her hand. “Before you start fighting,” she says, “does anyone wanna hear what the summoner thinks about all of this?”

The others go quiet, all gazing at her expectantly. She takes a deep breath.

“Yuffie, I understand what the Al Bhed are doing,” she says. “If you were only trying to convince the summoners that the pilgrimage is wrong, I wouldn’t mind it. I think wanting to save people is really noble and kind. But you can’t force someone to abandon the path that they chose, even if you don’t agree with it. You’ve been separating them from their guardians, too, the people who care about them more than anything.”

“But the path you chose is _wrong!_ ” Yuffie cries. “You’re gonna die, don’t you _care?_ ”

“Of _course_ I care.” Aerith clenches her fists, grasping at fistfuls of her skirt, suddenly anxious in a way she hasn’t felt in months at least. “It was the hardest decision I ever made. But I chose—”

“You’re throwing your life away,” says Yuffie, “just like every high summoner has. They all died trying to kill Sin, and Sin came back anyway. _Oui’na kuehk du tea palyica_ Yevon _dumt oui du, yht ed femm sayh—_ ”

“Stop.” Aerith clutches tighter to her dress. “Just… stop. Please.”

Yuffie does stop. She has a knit brow and stubborn pout that say she’s ready to argue but also faintly contrite, the way kids always look when they don’t want to admit they’ve said something wrong. In spite of everything, it’s admirable, that scrappy side of her, even endearing. At that age, Aerith had been far too much of a people pleaser. Maybe if she’d had more of a talent for being rude and impulsive she wouldn’t be in half the mess she is now.

Setting a steady hand on Aerith’s knee, Zack murmurs, “Hey, you okay?” and it’s only then that she realizes she’s trembling, and there’s a burning heat spreading from one of her ears and across her cheeks and nose to the other. A flush of frustration and embarrassment and maybe anger, and a pressure behind her eyes that could culminate in tears any second now.

“When High Summoner Lucrecia brought the Calm,” she says, the trembling having made its way to her voice, “for just a little while, everything was okay. They didn’t know Sin was coming back, but at least they could hope that it wouldn’t this time. They went on with their lives. Fell in love. Had babies.” Like her, she thinks. Like Zack, and even Cloud. “They didn’t go to sleep at night worrying their home would be destroyed. They _lived_. And you’re telling me—just because Sin might come back again, because we aren’t perfect—it’s all a waste?”

“Your life isn’t worth less than the people you’re saving,” says Yuffie. Stubborn to a fault. Praise be to Yevon for the tenacity of children. “You don’t owe it to them. Has anyone ever told you that? Just ’cause you dying would let them be happy doesn’t mean you need to.”

“I know that.”

“Then act like it! _Sudranvilgan_. Act like your life means something!”

A retort springs to mind immediately: _What is it even worth if I’m not helping?_ But when Aerith opens her mouth to say as much, the words register in her mind, and all the air rushes from her lungs. She balls up her fists so hard she can feel her knuckles going achingly stiff, then curls down into herself and begins to weep. It comes on so suddenly there’s no stopping it, and all she can do is sob and wail as Zack rushes to try and soothe her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (psssst if you wanna know what all the al bhed says [here is a translator](https://stephenw32768.appspot.com/albhed/))


	2. Chapter 2

“How is she?”

Tifa leans back against the closed door, shakes her head. “The same,” she says, just above a whisper. “I thought I’d give them some time alone.”

Cloud nods. “Good idea.” He looks at her more carefully now, at how she slumps under the weight of her exhaustion. “What about you, though? How are you holding up?”

“Me? I’m…” She shrugs helplessly. “Still here.”

“Can I—” he starts, then falters. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Not unless you’ve been studying healing magic behind our backs,” she says. It’s meant to be a joke, but it comes out flat, weak.

“No, I meant…” Now he wishes he hadn’t said anything. “For you.” When she just stares at him blankly, he says awkwardly, “You don’t like sitting by when people are hurting, so I just thought—forget it.”

“There is something you can do, actually.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I was thinking about walking to the temple, and I’d like it if you joined me.” Her voice pitches up at the end, uncertain.

“Sure,” he says. “You wanna tell them first?”

“Um.” She winces. “Honestly? Not really.”

“Come on, we’ll leave a message with Yuffie downstairs.”

Yuffie’s down in the lobby of the travel agency, curled up in a rocking chair and flipping through a book disinterestedly. She’s stuck here until tomorrow at least, when the next supply shipment is due to arrive. Hitching a ride back with the merchants, since _someone_ —she’d glared petulantly at Cloud as she said this—had to go and blow up her only means of transport with their stupid cat doll.

“Oh, look,” she says dully, glancing up when they stop in front of her. “If it isn’t Boobs and Mr. Chocobutt.”

“We’re heading to Macalania Temple,” says Tifa, who’s infinitely more patient than Cloud could ever be. “If Zack comes looking for us, could you let him know where we are?”

“Yep, sure thing.” She scratches her nose. “Hey, uh, sorry for… y’know. Whatever.”

“You meant well,” says Tifa. “For what it’s worth, she isn’t mad at you.”

Yuffie grimaces. “Yeah, I dunno.” She buries her face in the book that, just a minute ago, she hadn’t seemed to care about at all. “Anyway, get outta here. _E’s pico_.”

They leave her to her devices and set out into the cold. It’s late now, the evening creeping steadily closer, and the air’s getting frostier by the minute. The frigid air will do nothing to deter the fiends that are accustomed to the climate, though, so they stay on their guard as they walk along the road by the frozen lake. The hole in the ice where Yuffie’s machina weapon fell through is still there, though the machine itself is nowhere in sight, having already sunken into the depths.

With thankfully little effort, Cloud manages to conjure a tiny ball of flame that sits in his hand, warming him quickly. He offers to let Tifa hold it, but she declines, laughing nervously.

“I’d probably burn myself,” she says, sheepish.

“You won’t,” he says. “Here, let me see your hand.”

She holds her hand out, and he grasps her wrist gently, absently grateful that she finally caved and bought a coat when they first arrived at the travel agency the night before. With his other hand he takes the ball of flame and lowers it so it rests just over her palm, floating gently, the fire casting a cheerful orange glow over the leather of her glove. She makes the quietest noise of wonderment, half breath. If he were brave enough to look into her eyes he’s sure he’d see them shining.

“How long does it last?” she asks.

“No idea,” he admits. “Probably not very long without kindling.”

“We’ll just have to appreciate it while it’s here, then.” She grins at him. Then, “Cloud?”

“Yeah?” he says, made a bit stupid by her smile.

“You can let go.”

Just then he nearly releases his grip on her wrist, but decides suddenly that he doesn’t want to, not even a little bit. Doesn’t want to give up the proximity between their hands, their elbows, their shoulders that are so close to touching. “I know,” he says, less apologetic than he thinks he should be.

She ducks her head, and he worries he’s said or done something wrong until he hears her let out the airiest giggle. It’s a sound he’s never heard from anyone before, let alone Tifa. He doesn’t, in all honesty, really know what it means, but supposes it must be good.

“Okay,” she says.

Within a few short minutes, the little flame flickers and dies. He thinks for the briefest moment about replacing it with a new one, then decides against it. Thinks, too, about sliding his hand down further, taking her hand in his own, interlocking their fingers, but isn’t nearly brave enough. He lets go of her arm self-consciously, stuffs his hand in his pocket, adamantly does not look to gauge her reaction.

At the temple, they bow to the guard at the entrance, then enter.

Inside, Macalania Temple is much the same as any other. The only things setting it apart are the hazy light filtering in through the high windows, and the little band of musicians near the back, spirits of nature visiting from the Macalania Woods. Tifa walks toward the statue of Lord Ohalland, a man well-known to anyone from Kilika. At the front of the statue she sinks down into a kneeling position and begins to pray.

Cloud didn’t think to ask why they were coming here, and can’t imagine it would be appropriate now. She’s likely praying for Aerith’s recovery, he thinks, so they can continue onward to Zanarkand. Or praying for Aerith’s recovery for its own sake, because they’re friends, because she cares so much about the people around her. It could be any or all of those.

He’s never been one for prayer, himself. Even as a child, too young to be jaded about the institution and its callousness, he found temples unwelcoming, cold. He told his mom once that he didn’t like going to the temple in Kilika—not solely because it was so far from the village, and the walk there was perilous without an escort, but because the statues of the high summoners scared him. Rather than reprimanding him, she just laughed, ruffled his hair.

“They are scary,” she agreed. “The sculptors tried so hard to make them look serious, they forgot the common people just want to be comforted. They should’ve made them smile instead.”

It’s one of the few memories he has of her that’s still vivid, untouched by his sickness. He’s glad to have it, even if it’s something so inconsequential.

Eventually, Tifa stops praying and sits back on her heels, tilting her head to gaze up at the statue of Ohalland. “High Summoner Ohalland gave up playing blitzball to save Spira,” she says. “I kept telling myself for the longest time this is the path he’d want me to take. Being a guardian, taking Aerith to Zanarkand.”

“What about now?” asks Cloud.

“Now…” She trails off, and a silence falls over them for a long moment. She says quietly, “I don’t know if I can do this. That’s awful, right?”

“It’s not,” he says. “She’s your friend. You don’t want anything to happen to her.” He feels similarly, of course, but it’s different. He’s grateful to Aerith, so he’ll do what she asks, and she’s asked him to follow.

“I just keep thinking—” She gets to her feet. “Never mind. It’s not important.” Sighing, she turns to him and frowns. “Sorry. I thought coming here would help me figure things out. I guess it was just a waste of time.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He knows he should say something else, something to comfort her, but he doesn’t have any comfort to give. He’s no devout believer, and even though he thinks it’s foolish to try to stop the pilgrimages when they have no other options, he also thinks Yuffie’s a little bit right about summoners and wasted life. None of that would be helpful right now, so he says, “Come on, let’s head back.”

She walks close to him, not quite touching but very nearly. And he doesn’t want to overstep or make things worse, so he says nothing, refrains from reaching out to her despite how desperately he wants to. They don’t speak a word the entire way back.

Ten months and a bit ago, Zack was a warrior monk in Bevelle. The job sounded more prestigious than it was; he mostly dealt with combative drunks out in the streets, helped old ladies find their cats, fended off the occasional fiend that had snuck past the guards at the city limits or infiltrated the sewers. On this particular occasion, there were sahagin in the waterway, and the only reason Zack got stuck with extermination duty came down to a bad coin toss.

Sahagin are not especially lethal creatures. The threat of them is used to keep children from sneaking into public pools after hours or playing too close to fountain drains, and the everyday person might get a scrape or two if they pestered one of them enough, but the fish creatures are skittish on land, slow-moving and easy to avoid. It just makes it all the more embarrassing that three of them managed to get the jump on Zack and rough him up decently. Not a dire situation at all, but still far from ideal.

After he got his bearings, he made decently quick work of the group of sahagin with his sword, then heard a dull _thunk_ behind him. Spinning around, he saw a girl whacking a fourth creature with the hard metal head of her staff. One hit sent it reeling; another made it vanish into a pyrefly whirlwind. Zack just blinked bemusedly at the girl, unsure of what to say.

“It tried to sneak up on you while you were getting rid of its friends,” she said. Then she grinned at him with so much sweetness he thought he felt a palpable force strike him. Her eyes were summer green, shining and gentle, and he felt like he could get lost in them all too easily.

“Oh,” he said dazedly, then added something along the lines of, “You’re, uh, really pretty,” or some equally stupid comment.

Her smile faltered for a second. “Thanks?”

“Sorry,” he said. Then, “I mean, thank _you_. For the… fish.” Then, “Sorry. I’m Zack. I’m usually not this stupid.” He could have lied and said he hit his head, but the embarrassing truth was that he was so thoroughly caught off his guard that he couldn’t think straight.

“Aerith,” she said. “Do you need me to heal you? Looks like you had kind of a rough time with those guys.”

He said, “Uh,” then took a closer look and realized she was wearing the ceremonial garb of a summoner. Stumbling over his words, he said, “No, uh, thank you, my lady,” and bowed clumsily.

“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,” said Aerith. “Really, I’m just an apprentice, it’s—”

“You’re still a summoner,” said Zack, “and I’m just some dumbass who’s—shit, sorry, I shouldn’t say ‘dumbass’ in front of a summoner, huh? Or— _shit_. Wait. No, forget all of that.”

She laughed. “Are you _sure_ you don’t need healing?”

“No,” he said. “I mean, yeah, I’m sure.” He huffed out a laugh, too, rubbing his neck self-consciously. “Did I mention you’re _really_ pretty?”

She pressed her lips together tightly, trying to hold back a smile and failing. “Nope, doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Anyway, uh.” Flustered, he looked around for some idea of what to do but found nothing. “Do you want me to walk you to the temple, or, y’know, wherever you’re supposed to be right now?”

“I dunno,” she said slowly, eyebrows pinched in a look of concern. “I did you a pretty big favor back there. I don’t think we can leave till you settle your debt.”

“Alright, how about…” Might as well go all in, he figured. “One date. That sound fair?”

“Hmm.” She tapped her chin. “Okay, on one condition.”

“What?”

“No bowing and no calling me ‘my lady,’” she said sternly. “Just ‘Aerith.’ Got it?”

“Yeah,” he said, baffled by the entire situation but too giddy now to question it. He felt himself burst into an idiotic grin.

She answered with a smile of her own, then reached up and patted him softly on the cheek. “I do wanna heal you first, though,” she said. “Can’t be seen with a warrior monk who can’t handle a few measly sahagin, now can I?”

They kept seeing each other after that night, whenever they could make the time. Against all odds, Aerith seemed to find all his bumbling and false bravado charming, and confessed she thought he was _really pretty, too, actually,_ though she normally didn’t trust guys who were too pretty. She made an exception for him, though, deciding he was too nice and too earnest to be a jerk. It seemed like a generous assessment, so he accepted it.

He learned, too, that she was nearing the end of her apprenticeship, and soon her pilgrimage would begin. She didn’t have any guardians lined up yet—she’d left her friends and family behind in the Calm Lands, and in Bevelle most of the people she knew were in the clergy, or the Yevonite school she taught at, none of them suited for fighting or adventuring. Upon hearing this, Zack volunteered himself immediately.

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” said Aerith. She was delivering medicinal herbs to the temple healers, all gathered up in a woven basket. “We’ve only been dating a month and a half. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“You don’t have to ask,” he said. “I’m offering.”

He could see her uncertainty, though, the hesitation in her frown. He touched a hand to the middle of her back, just above the obi that she frequently complained was impossible to tie on her own, and that he was determined to eventually help her with, if he could just learn to do it neatly enough.

“You think I wanna sit here while my girlfriend runs off to save the world?” he said. “No chance. Unless this is your way of breaking up with me.” It was a joke, kind of, but not really.

“No,” she said at once, then fired back, “I’m just worried we’ll run into a few sahagin first thing and you won’t be any help, that’s all.”

“Ha, ha,” he said dryly. “I mean it, though. I wouldn’t feel right just waiting in Bevelle, knowing you were out there fighting for your life.”

“It’ll be hard.” There was no humor this time as she fixed a somber gaze on him.

“I know,” he said. “I can handle it.”

“I don’t mean the fiends.”

“I know,” he said again.

There was no point where he stopped to think that journeying with this woman and falling hopelessly, impossibly in love with her would be a bad idea. He knew that she would likely die one way or another. He didn’t like it, no, but he accepted it.

Feeling sentimental, he shares the story when they pass Bevelle on the way to the Calm Lands. All except that very last part.

“That’s sweet,” says Tifa. “Somehow I thought you’d been together a lot longer than that.”

“Nope, a little less than a year now,” says Zack.

He puts an arm around Aerith’s waist, not quite hugging her but keeping her close. She’s been quiet for most of the tale, thoughtful, but she looks up to flash him a brief, tiny smile now, setting her delicate hand on top of his, lacing their fingers.

It’s jarring to think that so little time has passed, that the days they’ve had together have been so few. But he wouldn’t trade these months with Aerith for anything; to have known her at all, and to have loved her, been loved _by_ her, is more than he could have asked for. He is still selfish for wanting more than this, he knows. He wants to keep traveling Spira with her, watch her look on in awe at every new place, listen to her thoughts and ideas about the people and things they encounter. He wants them to have time to learn new things about each other, even if it only serves to drive them apart, because at least they would have had the time to find out. If he had the choice between discovering she hates him and having to watch her die, he’d pick the first one every time. But he doesn’t get that choice. He’ll be with her just a short while longer, and that will have to be enough.

And as much as he hates it, as much as he hates these mayfly-short days, he won’t keep begging her to stop, to stay, to give up. Asking will only hurt her, maybe weaken her resolve. That isn’t what she needs now. He has to be her strength, a buoy in the sea of her doubt.

“A good year,” she says quietly.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “The best.”

The Calm Lands are too wide and expansive to cross in just one day, so they set up camp by the base of a cliff, establish a schedule to keep guard, keep a fire going to ward off errant fiends. Tifa, who’s set to take the very last shift into the early morning, settles into her bedroll and eventually falls into a light, restless sleep.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when she finds herself awake again, but it’s still dark out, the dead of night, and no one’s come to shake her so she can start on guard duty. At first, she can’t even tell what woke her up, until she hears a frantic hiss of, “Put it out,” followed by a scuffling sound.

“What’s going on?” she mumbles, sitting up and trying to blink away the lingering remnants of sleep. She squints toward the fire just in time to see it sizzle out with a rush of smoke.

“I don’t know,” says Zack, who sounds awake enough that Tifa thinks he was probably on guard. First shift still, then. “He just started freaking out and told me to—”

“It’s coming,” says Cloud. He’s still pouring water they collected from a nearby stream onto the still-hot embers, as though he’s forgotten he could just conjure his own. He’s desperate like Tifa’s never heard, urgent, crazed.

Once he seems satisfied the fire’s been thoroughly doused, he stops, waiting for something. There’s a moment of quiet, of stillness. Aerith is awake now, too, sitting up in her bedroll just feet away from Tifa. She’s just a silhouette in the darkness as she whispers, “Cloud, what’s coming?”

He doesn’t have to answer. Overhead, a large shadow passes, eclipsing the moon and stars and plunging them further into night. Tifa freezes, staring up in wide-eyed shock, not even daring to blink. The mass above them moves silently and steadily. The only sound that can be heard is Cloud’s shaky, frightened breathing, the way he gasps and trembles.

Sin passes further down the plains, along the chasm of the Scar, and, in time, disappears into the distance. After it’s gone, Tifa clutches at her chest, willing her heart to slow but equally afraid it will stop entirely.

“Shit,” Zack breathes. “I’ve never seen it that close before.”

“I have,” says Tifa.

Cloud doesn’t say anything, but he has, too. They all know. In the faint light of the stars she can see him still sitting by the spot where the fire had been, staring off into the distance, wholly transfixed.

He hadn’t been there when Kilika was attacked—nearly two years gone for his enlistment by then—but Tifa was. She wouldn’t wish the terror and helplessness she felt that day on anyone. If she could have somehow spared Cloud from ever experiencing something like it, she would have done it in a heartbeat. But she can’t undo the past. All she can hope to do is provide whatever comfort he’ll take from her.

“We should get the fire going again,” Aerith says after a long pause.

“I’ll do it,” Cloud mumbles, moving to grab more kindling from the pile. “My turn to watch anyway.”

“You sure, man?” asks Zack. “I can stay up longer if you need to crash.”

“Or I could take over,” says Aerith, “and you can rest for as long as you need.”

“Nope,” says Cloud. “Can’t sleep anyway.”

“I’ll keep you company,” says Tifa. “I’m not tired, either.” It’s not a lie. She still feels wired, her whole body on alert.

He doesn’t decline the offer, which is as good as she’s likely to get now. Zack and Aerith both settle back in their adjacent rolls, say their subdued good-nights, and seem to fall asleep quickly in each other’s arms. Tifa joins Cloud by the fire once it’s lit, sitting far enough away not to crowd him, but still within arm’s reach. She waits for him to speak first.

He does, though it takes a while. He says, “I never told you this, but ever since I woke up in Djose I’ve had these… gaps.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, softly as she can.

“Things missing in my memory. Names, people. Stuff from when we were kids.” He fiddles with his armlet, the one he’s taken to wearing ever since he started doing battle with them. Increased resistance to magic. It had seemed appropriate. “Sometimes I think I remember something, but I don’t know if it happened to me or if someone told me about it.”

“Is there a lot that you don’t remember?”

“Maybe,” he says. “Feels like a lot, some days. But I know it could be worse. And it’s just… old stuff. Things from before. Not anything that’s happened since.”

“Still, it must be hard,” she says. “Like a part of you is missing.”

“Yeah.” He licks his lips. “But there are some things I can remember really well. Things I know I didn’t make up or take from anyone else.”

She nods, urging him to go on.

“I remember… Mi’ihen,” he says. “The water turned black right before Sin came, and everyone just watched. I almost ran for it, but my commander said if I took one step away from that cannon, he’d shoot me himself.” He huffs. “After it sent out the shockwave that killed the ground troops, that asshole was the first one to turn tail. Figures.”

“What else do you remember?” she asks, stomach in knots. “Besides that day.”

He hums. “One time when we were kids, you swam out too far into the ocean and almost drowned. Your dad thought it was my fault ’cause I was the one who found you. Said I should’ve been more responsible and stopped you from going. It was right after—”

“After my mom died,” Tifa finishes. “I remember. I thought if I just kept going far enough, I’d find her out there in the water. It was so stupid.” It was because of an old myth about a sailor’s widow finding her lost love again at sea. But at the end of the story, the widow died, too. Tifa doesn’t know if her younger self had ignored that bit or if she was so lost in her grief it was just part of the plan.

“You were a kid,” says Cloud. “We all did stupid shit.”

“Like you, getting into those fights all the time?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, well. Lot of time to kill when you don’t have friends.” He says it matter-of-factly, without the bitterness she would have expected.

She asks, “Is that why you left? Because you were lonely?”

He looks uncomfortable. “I might’ve stayed for my mom, if she really wanted me to, but… there were a lot of reasons to leave. I wanted to do something that mattered. Feel like I belonged somewhere.”

“Oh.” It’s not uncommon. Plenty of people—boys, mostly—feel trapped in a place that small, stifled, and they venture out into the world to find fulfillment elsewhere. If not for Sin, Tifa doesn’t know if she ever would have left, and deep down that realization terrifies her. “Did you get that?”

“Not really.” He pauses. “I know you don’t wanna hear this, but if I knew back when we were growing up that being a summoner was on the table, I probably would’ve tried it. Might’ve been bad at it, but I still would’ve wanted to.”

“Why?” she asks, hardly wanting to know but feeling compelled to ask anyway.

“I don’t know if it’s something you can understand,” he says. “When you’re a lonely kid, you’ll try anything to make people give a shit and pay attention. Even if you have to die for it. A bad outcome’s better than being ignored.”

She stays quiet, chest aching.

“Doesn’t really matter, though,” he says. “I wouldn’t want something like that now.”

“What’s changed?”

He stares into the fire a long time. The light has rendered his eyes a shining grey, made his freckles all but invisible, cast lingering shadows that turn his face and body an alien shape. All the tiniest details that make him so beautiful to her have been hidden under this strange veil of night.

“After Mi’ihen,” says Cloud, “I realized I don’t wanna die. It scares the shit out of me.”

She’s quiet again, desolate. There are only so many ways you can tell a person they matter to you before it feels like a burden they’re being forced to accept, and just one time may have been their limit, she thinks, at least for now. She isn’t sure what else she can say. _I don’t want you to die, either,_ feels so trite and obvious that she’s afraid it wouldn’t mean anything.

A moment passes, and he continues, “Still figuring out what to do with that. If you’re not dead, you gotta live, and being alive means doing something.”

“We’re doing something now,” she says.

He looks at her, inscrutable, and says, “It’s gonna be over soon, one way or another.”

And once it’s over, what about them? What next? Tifa would ask if she thought she could handle the answer. The truth is that neither of them knows. Maybe she’ll go to her old team and beg them to take her back again, and he’ll find somewhere meaningful to apply his talents, and they’ll promise to keep in touch but never follow through, eventually turning to memories and nothing more.

“What’s something else you remember?” she asks, her heart skewered, miserable.

He’s still looking at her, and his eyes are metal-grey in the light of the dancing fire, and he says, “When I was sick, I kept hearing a song.”

“How did it go?”

With a frown of concentration, he hums a few seconds of it, just enough for her to recognize the tune from her mother’s old music box. It was a lullaby, though Tifa never knew the words herself—or if she did, she forgot them even before her mom died. She probably hummed it while she was looking after Cloud, without even realizing what she was doing.

“It was nice,” he says before she can tell him any of this. “Made me think of home. Not in a bad way.”

Not in a bad way. “I’m glad,” she says, and does not cry.

“For the last time, _we don’t have that much gil!_ ” Aerith all but shouts.

The fayth of Yojimbo doesn’t respond. The hawk eyes painted onto his helmet look indescribably judgmental.

After a heavy pause, Yojimbo says, “Two hundred and eight thousand.” Beside him, his dog _whuffs_. “Do we have a deal?”

“ _No!_ I only have—”

“Aerith,” Tifa says gently, touching her shoulder. “I don’t think getting angry with the fayth will make him want to come with us.”

Aerith takes in a deep breath, then sighs. “I know. I’m just frustrated.” All this time traveling, all that they’ve been through, and she isn’t allowed to join with this fayth because she’s on the verge of going broke. It’s absurd, honestly. What would an aeon do with gil, anyway? Can he spend it? Where does it even go once he’s dismissed?

But it’s not about the fayth or the money, not really. She’s been out of sorts ever since Lake Macalania, listless and confused, walking in circles in her head. She just needs to get a grip on things, get her thoughts back in order.

“I guess we’re done here.” She looks to Yojimbo and says, “Sorry, no deal.”

The fayth nods and then disappears, fading into the air.

They exit the cavern and then make their way back up through the gorge. The scenery in this place is familiar to Aerith: sheer cliffs, short grass brushing the ankles, dandelions, dry air. The comfort she thought that familiarity would give her, though, is conspicuously absent. Instead she feels that same loneliness that overtook her as she gazed out at the ocean from the shore of Mushroom Rock—not because the space is so empty, she realizes, but because she’s so small. The world is so vast and she can barely touch a fraction of it.

Before they can make it to the road leading to Gagazet, Zack comes to a sudden halt and says, “Wait.” It takes a moment for Aerith to realize why.

Descending toward the gorge, followed by just two figures now rather than a small army of guards, is Sephiroth.

“Aerith,” says Zack, a warning or plea or maybe question. She ignores him and begins to walk forward.

Their two parties come to a stop just a short distance from each other. Aerith offers a short bow, jaw clenched firmly shut to try and steel herself. One of Sephiroth’s guardians—a warrior monk, she would guess from his clothes—bows in return while the other two remain motionless.

“We meet again,” says Sephiroth. “Did you succeed in gaining the allegiance of the Stolen Fayth?”

“I decided to turn this one down, actually,” Aerith lies, turning on the sunniest grin she can muster up. “Didn’t think I needed him.”

“I see.” He turns his head slightly, but doesn’t break eye contact with Aerith as he says, “Angeal, are there any aeons remaining after this one?”

The warrior monk replies, “There are rumors of a lost temple somewhere in the Calm Lands, but no one’s been able to find it for centuries now.”

Aerith knows the temple he’s talking about. Or knows of it, at least. Elmyra told her the legend of Remiem long ago. The Lost Flower, the locals call it, though Aerith’s never had a clue what the name means. It disappeared after Gandof rent the Calm Lands in his battle against Sin. If anyone still knows what the aeon there was called, they must not be willing to share.

“How unfortunate,” says Sephiroth, sounding thoroughly unbothered all the while. “I suppose this will have to be enough.”

“You have the creature from Baaj, at least,” his other guardian says dully. Auburn hair and a long red coat. Aerith doesn’t recognize him in the slightest, has no clue where he could be from.

When she registers what he’s said, she can’t help but gape. “Baaj?” she echoes. “There’s an aeon at Baaj Temple?”

“You didn’t know?” says Sephiroth. “A fayth has rested there for over twenty years now. Nearly as long as you’ve been alive.”

A new fayth. It must have been created just after the last Calm ended. “At this point it doesn’t matter either way,” she says. “I’m almost at the end of my pilgrimage.”

“So you are.”

“And… you are, too, aren’t you?”

A tiny smirk pulls at his mouth. He offers no other answer than that, knowing and smug and somehow invasive.

“Well.” She stops, hesitates. No, this is no time to waver. She lifts her chin defiantly. “While you’re off adding to your vanity collection, I’ll be making my way up Gagazet.”

“By all means,” he says, “though before that, I propose we take this opportunity to measure each other’s abilities.”

It feels like a trap, though she isn’t sure just what he may have up his sleeve. His goals are always hidden behind a dozen layers of misdirection, excuses, ulterior motives. “What did you have in mind?” she asks, already wary.

“A contest of aeons. No guardians, no spells. Merely a test to see which of us is the stronger summoner.”

Behind Aerith, someone snorts. “That’s ridiculous,” says Zack. “Why would—”

“Okay,” says Aerith.

“Wait, are you serious?” Zack practically jumps to her side. “Come on. You don’t have anything to prove to this guy.”

“But I do,” she murmurs. “To him, and… to myself.”

“Aerith,” he starts, then falls silent when she shakes her head.

They decide to hold their battle further up the path, just past the first bridge that marks the end of the Calm Lands but before the second, beyond which the path to Gagazet begins. An empty, meaningless space belonging to no one. Aerith keeps silent as they walk, determination building up a slow burn inside her. Because sacrifice, she thinks, is not a passive act. It is not something she’s doing for lack of options. It’s a choice that says she’s the best person for this task, not someone who’s given up, or who doesn’t see their own worth. She knows exactly what she’s worth, and she’s going to show this arrogant prick what that means.

Soon, they’re standing on either side of a patch of ground sandwiched between small bridges, their guardians spectating from the sidelines where they’re safely out of the way.

“How do we judge who wins?” asks Aerith, staff at the ready. “Summoning every aeon wouldn’t be fair, since you have one more than I do.”

“Three aeons each,” says Sephiroth. “If one is dismissed, it can’t be summoned again and will qualify as a loss. Does that sound fair?”

“I think so,” she says.

“Since I issued the challenge, I’ll play the opening move.”

A superficial courtesy. If he goes first, it gives her the opportunity to choose her aeon strategically in response to whatever he brings out. But an aeon can only be summoned in one place at a time. Anything he summons is off the table for her at that moment. She says, “Please do.”

He lifts his spear and begins the motions of a summon. As he moves—graceful in a way that almost defies expectation—she thinks back on the time so long ago when she asked him why he would choose to wield a spear and not a staff. He gave her two answers then: first, that he’d trained as a swordsman long before becoming a summoner, and any bladed weapon was preferable to a dull one; and second, that he refused to stand defenseless and watch as others fought his battles for him.

(She remembers blurting after that, “You’ve killed people,” forgetting to phrase it as a question. She’d heard the rumors. Hard not to, the way they followed him incessantly. When he confirmed it anyway, unflinching in his response, she asked, “Why?”

He stared at her the same way he so often did—the way he does even now, calculating and distant, like she’s a butterfly on a board and he’s got her pinned with gaze alone—and said, “I won’t suffer insults like a meek child.” It told her everything she needed to know about him then and there, yet somehow failed to keep her from approaching him again, even if it should have.)

A glyph flashes beneath his feet, then nothing. Or the illusion of nothing. Then, from some unknown place in the distance, a terrible roar breaks through the air. Not like Bahamut or Ifrit, but something different. Something new.

From the chasm below, a serpentine beast with iridescent wings surges up, soaring into the air. As it circles above them, a cascade of water rains down from its glistening silver-blue scales. Then it spirals gracefully toward the ground by its summoner, where it lets out another shrieking roar. Aerith feels her mouth fall open in awe.

“I don’t believe you’ve met,” says Sephiroth. “This is Leviathan, King of the Seas.”

_Sea_. Her mind races. Her safest bet against an unknown foe would be Bahamut, she knows; he’s powerful, sturdy, and versatile enough to take on almost anything. But where’s the fun in playing it safe? What satisfaction would there be?

She focuses, willing a cage of lightning to form around her, then raises her staff to draw the power inward. Lightning is a wild thing, as any mage knows, deadly and unpredictable. She releases it back into the air, where it crackles and bursts, the summoning glyphs pulsing for just a flash. Then a gateway opens into nothing. Bolts of electricity shoot back toward her staff, connecting her to the creature on the other side of the gate. She pulls, and the lightning horse Ixion follows the motion, leaping horn-first, breaking through the gate with a spark and a whinny. He trots to Aerith’s side, where he stands proudly.

“Thanks for coming to help,” she murmurs. Her words are met with a soft whicker.

“Lightning against water,” says Sephiroth. “This should be interesting.” He looks to Leviathan. “Go.”

The two aeons dance around each other, the serpent twisting elegantly through the air as Ixion dashes and jumps nimbly past it. Their attacks barely make contact, sharp horn and deadly fangs repeatedly missing. It’s a stalemate, Aerith quickly realizes, and one of them will have to break it first.

Sephiroth knows it, too: “Aren’t you tired of this game of tag?” he asks, transparent in his attempt to goad her.

“I don’t know,” she says, “I think I could go a while longer. How about you?”

“I think it’s time to move on. Leviathan,” he calls. “Waterga.”

Before the deluge can hit, Aerith cries, “Watch out!”

Most of the water glances off of the glowing shield that Ixion conjures at the last second. Too close. Far, far too close. She’ll have to finish this quickly and not let it turn to a battle of attrition. If Ixion gets hit by that spell at full power just once, it’s over. His strength is in his agility, not his endurance, and third-tier spells are punishing even when he isn’t weak to their element.

“How about a little defense?” she says.

It’s a credit to her bond with Ixion that he understands what she’s asking for. He casts a nullification spell that orbits around him, bright blue. Just as he does this, though, Leviathan swoops down and manages to bite into Ixion’s side with his massive jaws.

“Time to heal,” she calls.

The bolt of lightning that Ixion calls down surges through his body, forcing Leviathan to relinquish his hold with a shriek, then quickly recoil.

Sephiroth clucks his tongue. “Now’s not the time to back down. Hit him where it hurts.”

Spheres of water form around Leviathan before hurtling toward Ixion, one after another. The horse dodges the first couple of hits, but the next breaks his nullification. The last few strike in quick succession, all hitting their mark. Ixion lets out a low grunt of pain.

All at once, Aerith feels a sharp tug in the connection between her and the aeon, clear as a tap on the shoulder or whisper in the ear. A signal that he’s hit his limit. She takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” she says, “let’s give them a shock.”

Just as his summoner had gathered lightning to call him forth, Ixion begins to pull energy from around him, forming a ball of light at the end of his curved horn. It crackles violently before turning to a beam that launches straight toward Leviathan. Over the sound of electricity roaring through the air, Aerith hears Sephiroth call something out. Then the beam of light connects, and currents of lightning that should have been powerful enough to seize the beast and raise it into the sky instead hit a glowing shield and bounce right off. Some of it branches, though, striking Leviathan in its sides, scorching it. One nearly hits Sephiroth himself, though if he’s concerned at all for his own safety, it doesn’t show.

After, both aeons are still standing, wounded. The next move will likely be the decisive one.

“Destroy him, Leviathan,” says Sephiroth.

This time, the waterga hits Ixion full-on. He falls to the ground and bursts into a cloud of pyreflies. The space the fayth occupies inside of Aerith feels hollow for the time being, bereft. Ixion won’t return to his rightful place until he’s had a long rest.

“First point to me, then,” says Sephiroth, still smirking in that awful way.

Aerith’s nostrils flare. She brandishes her staff, twirls it cleanly through the air. Now, when Bahamut comes hurtling down from the heavens, she doesn’t cower or run for safety as she did before; she stands her ground, stumbling just a bit when his landing beside her shakes the earth.

She calls without preamble, “Thundaga.” She and the dragon don’t know each other well enough yet for her to get away with anything but the plainest commands.

A ball of lightning magic forms in the center of Leviathan, tearing it from the inside. He, too, vanishes.

“One to one now,” she says evenly, no longer bothering with the pretense of friendliness.

He just chuckles. “Not for long,” he says.

He begins his next summoning, and though the motions are different from hers, it’s recognizable the moment a ball of flame touches the ground. Ifrit bursts through in a shower of rock and fire, then lets out a monstrous growl, flames fanning out from between his teeth.

“Attack,” says Aerith.

They set into each other immediately, the two brutish aeons, sinking their fangs and claws into one another as savagely as they’re able. Aerith has the advantage—at any moment, she could have Ifrit frozen, putting out the fires that emanate from his body—but it feels somehow dishonest to seize the opportunity. She thinks the battle is meant to be just this, a feat of pure strength.

A question is still plaguing her, though, lingering at the back of her mind, unanswered even now. “Sephiroth,” she calls out over the clamor, “you never told me. Why do you want to face Sin?”

“What an interesting question,” he says, gaze following their aeons’ movements. “Why does any summoner seek to defeat it?”

“You’re not just any summoner,” she counters.

“True.”

“Then why? We both know it’s not some noble act of sacrifice for you.”

He says nothing. With Ifrit and Bahamut grappling between them, she can’t even see him, outside of the shortest glimpses.

Just as both aeons are starting to show some wear, Sephiroth calls, “That’s enough,” and Ifrit disentangles himself with ease, bowing his head before making a quick retreat.

Aerith frowns. “You’re conceding a point?”

“He’s accomplished what he needed to,” Sephiroth says, cutting his blade through the air and then shooting a bright signal flare into the sky.

More delicately than Bahamut’s swift dive, Valefor flies through the clouds and down to the battlefield. Unlike the other aeons, she doesn’t make a sound.

There must be a reason, Aerith thinks, for Sephiroth choosing this particular aeon. Valefor is too weak to withstand any of Bahamut’s attacks, physical or magical. He could tear her apart like rice paper. It hardly feels like a fair fight.

“Fira—”

Before she can finish the command, Sephiroth says, “End it.”

Valefor rises up and somersaults through the air. As she whips her feathered head in a circle, the motion forms the outline of an unfamiliar symbol in front of her. Just after, energy starts to gather inside her open mouth. Aerith stares for just a moment, then gets a hold of herself.

“Shield,” she calls.

Bahamut braces himself, raising his glimmering shield. A volley of energy beams shoots out of Valefor’s beak and rains down like hail, washing over him. The shield does nothing to lessen the lethality of it, and Bahamut goes down just as Ixion had. And yet again, there’s that aching void in Aerith’s chest, that unfillable space.

“One more,” says Sephiroth. “Choose carefully.”

One aeon calls out to Aerith now with quiet urgency, demanding to be brought forth. She wants to win this as badly as Aerith. No—even more so, Aerith thinks. The Lady of Frost was a pious woman in life, too, but in death she’s become a vengeful thing. The aspect of her residing in Aerith’s spirit isn’t one to sit by and endure humiliation. Particularly not, it seems, at the hand of one of her own priests.

Frost begins to gather around Aerith with little urging. She doesn’t look back when shards of ice come crashing down behind her, nor when they blow apart in a rush of frigid wind. The soft patting of bare feet on the ground signals Shiva’s arrival.

“Please, lend me your strength,” Aerith says when she feels the aeon’s presence at her side.

“Yes,” says Shiva, her voice as cold and as delicate as falling snow. She walks forward, bringing with her a frigid aura.

Sephiroth and Valefor do nothing at first, the latter hovering out of reach in the sky. Biding time, or confident in Shiva’s inability to hit her? It could be a little of both.

“So?” asks Aerith, gaze flitting between Valefor and Sephiroth. “What’s your answer?”

“Answer to what?”

“You know what.”

He sighs. “Do you really want to know that badly? Fine. Defeat me and I’ll tell you.” He taps the butt of his spear against the rocky ground just once.

With that, Valefor flaps her wings mightily, sending a gust of wind toward Shiva that’s effortlessly dodged.

“Show them what you can do,” Aerith tells Shiva.

The aeon casts a haste spell that radiates orange-gold around her, then conjures a block of ice that begins to fall over Valefor, narrowly evaded with a graceful dart to the side. When the rock of ice falls, large, glassy fragments scatter across the ground, then disappear just as quickly as they’d been summoned.

Shiva hurls spell after spell toward Valefor, not giving her enemy a single moment to rest or retaliate. Sharp icicles, chill winds and heavy masses of ice follow the flying demon’s every movement, and each one of Valefor’s dodges comes the tiniest fraction later than the last. Soon, she won’t be fast enough to save herself.

“Valefor,” Sephiroth shouts, hitting the butt of his spear to the ground three times.

Valefor twists away from a blizzara spell, then takes a sharp dive toward Shiva, who dodges with a nimble hop. Rather than make another attempt, however, Valefor turns and moves toward a new target.

Aerith.

It happens so quickly the summoner barely has time to react. She just raises her staff protectively in front of her and braces for impact.

Instead, she feels a wave of sudden heat as Valefor is consumed by fire, turning first to ash and then vanishing altogether.

“Game’s over,” she hears. Cloud. “You forfeit.”

“You’ve broken the rules as well by interfering,” Sephiroth replies. “We’ll call it a draw.”

“Son of a bitch,” Zack spits, beginning to march toward Sephiroth with his sword drawn. Opposite him, the redheaded guardian starts to move as well, his own weapon in hand.

“Zack, stop,” says Aerith. “We don’t need any more trouble.”

“Bullshit,” says Zack, who’s frozen in place but still armed and poised to fight. “He just tried to kill you!”

“It was a feint to redirect her aeon’s focus,” says Sephiroth. “I had no intention to harm her.” For her part, Aerith doesn’t know if that’s true. It’s hard to tell with him.

“You really expect us to believe that, huh?”

“Believe what you want.”

Zack swears again and takes a step forward.

“That,” Sephiroth’s guardian drawls, “is close enough.”

“I’d be careful, Fair,” adds Angeal. “Threatening a high priest of Yevon is a serious crime.”

Aerith breathes in sharply. “You know him, Zack?”

“Of course I do.” After a moment of hesitation, Zack returns his greatsword to his back. “Angeal Hewley. He was my commanding officer in Bevelle.”

“And if he survives our journey to Zanarkand,” says Sephiroth, “there’s no doubt a promotion waiting for him. Heidegger plans to name you second-in-command, doesn’t he?”

Angeal grimaces and says, “Maybe.”

“I tire of this, Seph,” says the redhead, twirling his blade lazily. “Shall we leave these children to their mindless dawdling?”

“In a moment, Genesis.” Sephiroth looks to Aerith once more. “Lady Aerith. You may reach Zanarkand before me, but you will not succeed. I will be the one to defeat Sin. ”

The way he says it, with absolute, unshakable certainty, almost makes her believe him in spite of herself. But rather than indignant rage, there is, oddly, a sort of comfort that follows from that. No matter his reasons or what she may think of him, no matter the enmity between them, he stands ready to complete the task if she fails.

Still, she won’t concede that to him, only saying, “We’ll see.” She turns to Shiva, who watches her expectantly, cold and severe but not unwelcoming. “Thank you. For everything.”

Shiva moves toward Aerith, reaching out to gently caress her cheek. The gesture is tender and motherly and leaves behind a tingling numbness. Then the aeon takes her leave, and the essence of her settles back into Aerith’s chest, softly beating alongside her heart.

The snow on Gagazet isn’t like the dense, icy stuff surrounding Lake Macalania. It’s loose, fluffy, impossible to walk in. With every step Cloud feels more snow creep down into his boots and drench his socks. And no amount of magic will help, either; he could waste all his energy trying to melt a path in front of them, and they’d still have to splash miserably through puddles.

As they climb the mountain, they fend off grenades, imps, bashura, nidhogg. They can’t rely on Aerith’s summons while she and the aeons recover, so everything comes down to the power of Zack’s sword, the speed of Tifa’s fists, the precision of Cloud’s spellcasting. They fight, survive, progress toward the summit, until they eventually find a cliffside path, and on a large stretch of mountain beside it, a mural.

Tifa gasps. “Are those—”

With a second glance, Cloud realizes then it isn’t a mural at all: It’s a mass of bodies protruding from the rock, with symbols of Yevon painted all around them. A hazy mist runs down the wall and over the figures, the color of a clear afternoon sky, and gathers below the cliff in what Cloud had thought was a spring. The energy funnels into a vortex that reaches ever upward.

“Fayth,” says Aerith. “And someone is calling on them. Summoning.”

“Summoning what?” asks Cloud, but Aerith just shakes her head, frowning.

After, they come to a system of caves where it’s the slightest bit drier, warmer, though with the branching paths they’re left without a clue of where to go.

“The Trials of Gagazet,” Aerith says quietly. “This must be what the Ronso were talking about.”

“Did they give you any hints?” asks Zack. “Maybe some cryptic riddles to solve?”

“I don’t think so.” She cranes her neck to peer down one tunnel, then another. “Maybe we should just try them all?”

“Could take a while,” says Cloud. “We don’t know how deep these go.”

Tifa shrugs. “We could split up?”

Cloud starts to say, “We’re not—”

But Zack cuts in, “I’ll take the top left path with Aerith. You guys can take the one down on the bottom.”

It’s stupid and risky. Guardians shouldn’t leave their summoner, especially when she’s weakened and vulnerable. But the less time they spend in this place, the better. “Fine,” says Cloud. “We’ll meet back here in ten.”

“Ten minutes isn’t enough time to find something interesting,” says Aerith. “Let’s make it thirty. Besides, Zack and I don’t have watches to keep track of time,” she adds, sheepish, “so we’d probably overshoot the ten-minute mark without meaning to.”

Cloud sighs.

They part ways there. Cloud starts down the lower path, Tifa’s footsteps echoing just behind him.

The tunnels are all lit dimly by glowing fungi on the damp walls. There’s a damp, musty smell hanging about, the odor growing stronger as they walk deeper into the cave, and the path keeps sloping gently downward.

“It’s peaceful here,” Tifa murmurs.

“Too quiet,” says Cloud. Every time a boot sends a loose pebble skittering through the tunnel, or a drop of moisture falls from ceiling to rocky floor, he tenses in anticipation. This is the wilderness, too, and every turned corner holds the possibility of lurking fiends, ones that are silent and patient and hungry.

The path bends and curves, and after a short while the tunnel gives way to stairs leading into a pool of water, a small lake, all aglow with opalescent fungi. There’s no other path forward.

“Dead end,” he says. “Guess we’ll have to try another way.”

“Hold on.” She kneels down and dips her fingers into the water. “It’s warm.”

He frowns. “Warm?”

“Yeah.” She drags her hand through the water slowly, as though testing a bath. “It’s… nice, actually. We could probably get in and be fine.”

“We have no idea how long the tunnel goes on for. Or if there’s even air at the end of it.”

“Please,” she says, turning to shoot him a grin. “You’re talking to a professional blitz player here.” She stands and stretches her arms, shifts her weight to stand on the tips of her toes. “Holding my breath shouldn’t be a problem.”

She starts to shed her clothes then, unbuttoning her jacket first, while he says, “You’re not going down there alone.”

“Hmm? You can come, too, if you want,” she replies. “Just let me know if you’re short on breath, okay?”

It’s not a patronizing offer, because that’s not how she is. Just a genuine expression of concern. It’s a fact, anyway, that she’s more suited to this than he is, has well-trained lungs and better stamina for swimming. He isn’t going to waste time feeling offended over something obvious.

They both do away with their heavy outerwear, then their boots, too clunky and thick-soled for diving, followed by socks and other miscellany. Then, after some consideration, his shirt. It all winds up in small piles over their packs, Cait Sith perched on top of it all in his plush, cottony glory. Tifa goes first, dipping her bare foot in.

“It’s even nicer than I thought,” she says, continuing forward until she’s wading in it. Another few steps and she’s waist-deep. She glances back at Cloud over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah.” He hesitates. The swimming part isn’t much of a concern. He’ll be essentially unarmed, though, completely vulnerable to anything that may attack. “Could be something down there.”

“You mean fiends? We’ll be fine.” She’s never been one for cockiness, but this is just certainty, calm and true. “I won’t let anything happen.”

And he believes her wholeheartedly. When she says that, he trusts that it’s true more than he would trust it from anyone else in the world. He nods and follows her into the water, which is pleasantly warm and still, and the musty odor now smells more like rainfall.

Once it gets deep enough to swim properly in, Tifa dunks her head right under, emerging again after just a second. She sighs, eyes shut, and pushes her hair back. “I missed this,” she says.

It would be redundant to say she’s beautiful. Of course she is. Anyone who’s seen her could tell as much, and she’s probably been told enough times by now that the compliment rings hollow. But here, in the soft glow of this cave, smiling serenely as she leans back to float along the surface of the water, she is beautiful in a way that makes him feel as though he’s noticing it for the first time. He feels his insides buzz, feels breath catch in his throat, feels a flush rise to his cheeks.

Abruptly he’s struck by a memory of being fourteen and sitting at the end of a pier that no longer exists, a girl with bright, earnest eyes beside him. She has the soft fragrance of flowers he no longer remembers the name of, a perfume he knows must have been stolen from her mother’s old things, too mature for a young girl to have for herself. She looks at him smilingly, asks him to come back someday and save her, just once. And he still hasn’t. She saved him instead, and he thinks he prefers it that way; he’s never been the dependable or heroic sort, too cowardly and self-conscious and cynical in equal measure to do the right thing. And she has her fears and reservations, too, but her only flaw is that she cares too much and it drives her to hopeless indecision.

“Tifa,” he says once he finds his voice, deciding he’ll have to say something stupid while he has the chance. He doesn’t think it would be unwelcome, at least, unless he’s read all the signs so wrong that he’s beyond help.

In response, she opens one eye and then promptly flicks a hand to splash him, leaving him dripping wet and just staring in open-mouthed shock. She breaks down in a fit of giggles.

“You always look so serious,” she says, grinning as she drifts lazily backward. “You can relax for just a minute, can’t you?”

He continues gaping for a moment, then comes to a realization and huffs. “You never wanted to keep exploring,” he accuses.

“I don’t really feel comfortable leaving all our stuff behind,” she says. She shifts back to an upright position, treading water. “Sorry. I was thinking we could come back this way later and have Aerith and Zack stand guard.”

“And for now, you’re just gonna swim,” he says dubiously. He’s still in shallow enough water to stand up, the tiny waves she makes lapping at his chest, and unlike her he doesn’t have any plans to move.

“Why not? We have time. There isn’t much else we can do right now.” Then her brows knit guiltily. “And… I kind of needed a minute to regroup, you know? Things are…”

“Yeah,” he says, “I know.”

She takes a deep breath before diving under the surface. The water is clear, so he watches as she sinks down a few feet, pauses, then springs back up again. This time, after pushing her fringe away from her face, she reaches down to the end of her hair and takes the elastic band out of it, holds the band between her teeth while she gathers her hair into a high ponytail. The whole process is sort of mystifying to Cloud.

Once her hair’s up and out of the way, she says, “I’m gonna head back under and take a look further down the tunnel. Wait here for just a minute?”

He nods. Doesn’t insult her by telling her to be careful.

She disappears down the tunnel for a time. He counts the seconds while she’s gone (forty-seven) and almost sighs in relief when she comes back, cutting smoothly through the water.

“It’s not very far,” she says. “There’s another path coming out the other side.”

“Any fiends?” he asks.

“Didn’t see any, but I can’t really be sure.”

He hums. “We’ll just have to be careful when we come back.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Cloud?”

“Yeah?”

“I was just thinking—remember when I said I wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do?”

“You mean Aerith’s pilgrimage?” he asks. “Yeah, why? You still not sure?”

“I can’t help but wonder—what if our responsibility isn’t to guard her, but to keep her from doing this?” There’s a note of plea in her voice. He wishes he could tell her what she so clearly wants to hear.

“But you said yourself you can’t force something like that,” he says.

“I know. I know. I just wish…”

There’s another pause before she takes a breath and sinks back into the water. He sees her swim the perimeter of this section of lake, completing a lap before resurfacing. She moves like a creature of the sea, or maybe the sea itself, all effortless grace.

“You don’t like swimming that much, do you?” she asks, like the previous conversation never happened.

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re standing there like you’re afraid to get in deeper.”

“I’m not,” he says, “but you know we have to dry off once we’re done here, right?”

“You’re going to be soaked through sooner or later,” she says. “What difference does it make?”

“That doesn’t sound like Tifa,” he says. “Aerith’s rubbing off on you.”

Once again, she splashes him, this time with both hands. “Maybe you could stand to be a little more like her, too, then.”

He blinks the water from his eyes, shakes already dripping hair from his face, wrinkles his nose. “I don’t need—”

“Come on!” she says, taking him by the arm and dragging him away from the rocky shore despite his noises of protest.

It’s been a long time since he swam— _really_ swam, not like when he dove into the Moonflow to help Aerith. While he knows how to do it, the simple act of just being in the water, existing as himself, is foreign. Once upon a time, he enjoyed being here. In the ocean, or the river cutting through Kilika, the freshwater lake, he could be alone in a way that felt acceptable, currents roaring in his ears and the whole world devolving to just distorted shapes above him. It was peaceful. Sometimes he would hold his breath and—hold his—he would—no. The memory fizzles out, quick as anything.

He breathes in now, shuts his eyes and lets himself descend at last. Immediately, all sound mutes, the movement of his limbs and Tifa’s turning low and muffled. He blinks his eyes open, takes a look around him, sees worn rock and little lights, white and yellow and pink. Sees Tifa’s legs and body and feels suddenly odd, anxious, like the space they’re sharing is somehow intimate.

When he resurfaces, the air feels colder than before. He hunches down as low as he can without going back under.

“When we were kids,” says Tifa, “do you remember how everyone would compete to try and sit cross-legged underwater?”

He doesn’t, though he thinks this is less of a memory issue than a symptom of his having been an outcast. He says, “Don’t think so.” Then, “Did you win?”

“I didn’t even try,” she says. “Too afraid.” She laughs. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever done it. Not even since I started playing blitzball.”

“You could do it now,” he says. “Better late than never.”

She bites her lip. “Okay,” she says an entire moment later, and he very much doubts her hesitation has anything to do with the difficulty of this simple, effortless thing. “Make sure you watch, alright?”

He nods, then they dive under at the same time. She swims down to the bottom, where the stairs end and turn to smooth rock. There, she turns, kicks her legs out in front of her and sinks down just a little more. The moment she makes contact with the floor she crosses her legs, grins so triumphantly he feels himself start to smile in return.

After they go back up, she laughs again and says, “It took nearly fifteen years, but I finally did it.” Then, “Thanks, Cloud.”

“For what?” he asks.

“For reminding me I can still change,” she says. “And just being there.”

“No biggie,” he says, not feeling like he did much of anything to warrant thanks. “I’m here whenever you need me. Even for dumb shit,” he adds.

“Good, ’cause it goes both ways.” She smiles and suddenly his heart beats that nervous rhythm again. “If there’s ever something you need, I’ll be there. And I mean that.”

As if she hasn’t done enough for him already. He thinks she probably wouldn’t like it if he pointed that out, though. “I’ll hold you to it,” he says, then dives back under.

“Here,” says Aerith, stopping by the large crevice they found in the wall earlier and pointing.

It’s large enough for a person to fit through—barely, in Zack’s case. He’d have to crouch down and shimmy through sideways. All that’s visible through the opening is more bluish stone.

“What’s on the other side?” asks Cloud. He’s shivering, a blanket wrapped tightly around him while his hair continues to drip with water. Clearly more miserable than Tifa, who already seems to have warmed up by keeping active, hardly daring to stay still.

“Dunno,” says Zack. “I don’t think it’s part of the trial, though. Seems like it’s here by accident.”

It takes several minutes to decide who goes in first, though not because nobody’s willing. They all have an argument for why they should be the one to go through, apart from Aerith, the least prepared to face danger out of all of them. In the end, Cloud winds up just sighing mid-argument, dropping the blanket from around his shoulders, gathering up his Cait Sith and going in.

Seconds pass. From the other side of the rock, Cloud lets out a wordless noise of surprise, close to a yelp.

“What’s wrong?” asks Tifa.

“There’s—uh—” He pauses. “I don’t think it’s a fiend. Some kind of animal, I guess?”

Zack frowns. He says to Tifa, “Stay here with Aerith,” then takes his sword from his back to keep it from hitting against the rock as he ducks down into the hole.

After bumping his head several times he emerges on the other side, in a cave of some description. Cloud is standing just to the side of the hole in the rock wall. He says, “Over there,” tilting his head to indicate a space to their left.

The corner is shadowy, but there’s unmistakably some kind of beast there, furry and red, four-legged. A wolfish thing, but not like the bandersnatches dotting the mountain. It’s just lying there, watching the two of them with one eye, making no move to get up and attack. At the end of its long tail is a tiny flame that flickers against the blue-grey stone of the cave floor.

Zack doesn’t really know what to do. He looks at Cloud, who shrugs.

Through the crevice, Aerith calls, “Is it safe?”

“No idea,” says Zack. “Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t look like it wants to eat us or anything. It’s just kinda… sitting.”

The beast lets out a rumbling huff and rests its head on its forelegs. If Zack didn’t know any better, he’d say it looked exasperated.

“We’re coming through,” says Tifa.

The men both move aside to make room. Tifa steps through, followed immediately by Aerith. They both look faintly startled when they see the creature, as though they’d expected something different, or maybe didn’t believe it was actually there.

“Well,” says Tifa. She looks to the right, where there seems to be a tunnel leading out of the cave. “Should we… go?”

“I would prefer that you did,” says the creature, making the four of them nearly jump out of their skins.

“You can _talk?_ ” Zack cries. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“You came into my home unannounced,” it grumbles, tail twitching irritably. “I was not compelled to introduce myself to you.”

“We’re sorry to intrude,” says Aerith. “We didn’t realize anyone lived here.”

The beast gets to its feet in the slow, lazy way of someone who’s just woken up, then opens its jaws wide and yawns, showing off gleaming white fangs. It walks toward them, coming further into the light as it does so. Running from its head to the top of its back is a long mane, decorated with fine beads and feathers. There’s a metallic bracer on each of its four legs, golden rings pierced through its pointed ears, old battle wounds marring its flesh. One of its eyes is scarred shut. The more Zack looks at it, the more cat-like it appears, save for its long snout.

“You are a summoner,” it says to Aerith.

“My name is Aerith, and these are my guardians,” she says, bowing informally. “I’ve come here in the hopes of seeing my pilgrimage through to its end.”

“The Ronso would have you subjected to the Trials first,” says the beast. “If you would like, I can show you a different path.”

“Is that allowed?” asks Zack.

“The mountain was here long before the Ronso, and it will remain long after they are gone. Gagazet does not care about their challenges.” Brushing past them and walking toward the exit, it says, “This way. And prepare yourselves; there are fiends ahead.”

They gather up their belongings and follow the beast, who’s called Nanaki, one of the last remaining wardens of Gagazet. His kind were the first to live here, the mountain’s oldest children, born in its depths out of flame while the Ronso were conceived in ice. They had always been few in number but long-lived. Now, he says, there are only two of them. The group is lucky, allegedly, that it was Nanaki they stumbled across and not Deneh, who would sooner let them freeze than deign to help any humans.

(“So are you two related,” Zack asks, “or like, _together_ , or…?”

“We are not closely related,” Nanaki says gruffly. “And I don’t understand your second question.”

“He’s asking if you’re, um, romantically involved with each other,” says Tifa.

“Ah,” says Nanaki. “A peculiar concept. As the last of our kind, we are expected to mate.” He pauses. “Until then, we have decided to see one another as infrequently as we can manage.”

“And how infrequent is that?” asks Aerith.

“Every five years.”

“Nice,” says Zack.)

He leads them through tunnels infested with all manner of monsters, behemoths and mandragora, grendels, flans so dark they melt into the shadows despite their size. While the group fights, Nanaki stays back, lurking, calling out warnings from a safe distance. Following a close struggle with a behemoth, Zack nearly shouts at their four-legged companion in frustration, demanding to know why he’s doing this, taking them through paths so thick with fiends and then leaving them to cut through on their own. Is this a trial, too? A trap? Or is he just a coward, too spineless to join in the fray?

Zack doesn’t yell. That would attract more fiends, further battles. Just asks tiredly, “You plan on helping at some point?”

Nanaki squints at him sidelong. “I am very nearly the last of my kind, human,” he says. “I will show you the way, but I have no intention of risking my life for your cause.”

“Hey, Sin is a threat to you, too, you know.”

“As are the fiends that roam this land,” Nanaki counters.

“Zack,” Aerith murmurs, “please don’t antagonize our guide.”

Zack drops it. The next time they do battle, he sees a veil of protective light wash over him. When he glances toward Aerith to thank her he sees she isn’t looking his way at all, her focus entirely on Tifa’s fight with a nidhogg. All he finds is Nanaki watching from a distance, calm and expectant. Zack nods, receiving only that same impassive stare in return.

After a time, they leave the tunnels and find themselves out in the elements once again, on a cliffside with a view of nothing but clouds tinged a dreamy orange-pink by the setting sun. Nanaki stops by the exit and sits. His tail burns brightly even in the snow.

“There is a path leading to the summit just ahead,” he says. “A challenger awaits you there.”

“Challenger?” Aerith echoes.

“Sent from the ruins to test your worth.”

She sighs. Zack doesn’t blame her. It’s been a day full of tests and challenges and trials. There will be doubtless more in the ruins of Zanarkand. “What is it?” she asks.

“Something foul.” Nanaki’s lips curl back from his teeth in a snarl. “I can smell its stench on the wind.”

“We shouldn’t keep our guest waiting,” she says. “You’re staying here, right?”

“Yes.”

She bows fully this time. “Thank you, Nanaki.”

“Yeah,” says Zack. “Thanks.”

Nanaki’s ear twitches. “There remains a long road ahead of you yet,” he says. “Take care.” He turns back around and retreats into the tunnels, the flame on his tail a tiny beacon in the dark.

They forge ahead, knowing another monster lies in front of them. Zack forces himself to focus on that, on the immediate threat. Zanarkand just keeps drawing ceaselessly closer and there is nothing he can do about it now.

Beyond the snow, at the point where everything is just dirt and crumbling ruin, they set up camp. Night has fallen. The dead city is as peaceful as wreckage can be.

Zanarkand is a mass grave, the whole cityscape flooded with pyreflies. They move through the air in wide streams over the ruins and the water nearby, quieter than the ones in the Farplane or at the Moonflow, their mourning song a whisper that’s nearly drowned out by the murmuring currents of the sea. Tifa sits on the small hill overlooking their campsite and watches these lights dance over the wide expanse of rust and rubble.

This isn’t the end, only the prelude to it. Once they cross the ruins and reach the temple, Aerith will receive the Final Aeon. The rest of them, her sworn guardians, will travel with her back to the Calm Lands, and then they will leave her, and then she will die. They have days still to say goodbye. Two, at minimum. The time will either pass in an instant or drag on for a small eternity, but either way it will hurt. It already does.

“How’s the view?”

Tifa turns to Aerith, who’s made her way up the hill, too. “It’s nice,” she says as Aerith sits down next to her. “A little scary, though.”

“I always wondered what it would look like here,” says Aerith. “You can almost see how beautiful it must’ve been. The city that never sleeps.”

Tifa hums.

They sit like that for a while, saying nothing. The guys are probably by the fire still. Tifa doesn’t really know. She came up here just after they all ate, and she’s been too absorbed in her thoughts to pay attention to anything else.

Abruptly, she remembers something and it gives her a start. “Oh!” She reaches into her pocket. “Before I forget again, um, I’ve been meaning to give this back to you for a while.” She pulls out that embroidered handkerchief from so long ago and holds it out. “Sorry.”

Aerith takes it, expression alight with surprise. “I actually forgot all about it,” she says, offering Tifa a little smile. “If you’d never given it back, I don’t think I would’ve noticed.”

“I promise I wasn’t trying to take it,” says Tifa. “It was just hiding at the bottom of my bag for a while. I was waiting for the right time to give it back.” A pause. “It looks really…” Expensive? No, that’s not the right word just now. “High-quality,” she settles on.

Holding the cloth gently in one hand, Aerith says, “It was my dad’s. Yevon officials have the symbols of the pilgrimatic temples all over their belongings.” She traces a finger over each of them. “Emptiness. Lightning. Fire. Ice. Light. Darkness.” Pausing on the last one, she adds, “I don’t know what the darkness is supposed to represent. Maybe it used to be Yojimbo, before he was taken away.”

Or the Final Aeon, Tifa thinks but doesn’t say. “It must mean a lot to you. Sorry for holding onto it for so long.”

“Really, it’s fine,” says Aerith, setting the handkerchief on her lap. “I know this probably sounds awful, but to tell you the truth, it doesn’t mean a lot to me. All my life, he’s been like a character in a story. I don’t even know that much about him.”

“Cloud’s dad died when he was really young, too. Mine was—” The rest of the words catch. “Five years ago,” she manages.

Aerith rests a hand atop hers. “It’s hard,” she says, “losing people you care about.”

Her tone has a note of awareness and apology. In Tifa’s eyes, though, there’s no cause for guilt. It’s not Aerith’s fault that the world is like this, that people are so often taken from them—not even her fault that she’s leaving, either, the loss of her already casting a shadow over each place they go to and everything they do or see. The world is intrinsically unfair. Tifa can’t blame her for wanting to make it better.

Before all of this, Tifa had very little in the world she could call hers. She shared a cramped and impersonal living space with three other women, worked long hours at a shabby dive bar during the off season, hardly saw or spoke with other people outside of work or blitz practice. Between leaving Kilika and joining Aerith, she can’t say that she made many friends; everyone in her life was a roommate or teammate or coworker. Now, she has these three people who matter to her, soon to be two, or maybe just one, or it will all fall apart and she’ll be right back where she started.

Framing this tragedy around her own loneliness is selfish, but all she can do is fret about every little thing, with scarcely any control over what comes to mind next. This is less trivial, at least, than worrying she’s lost her chance to tell the person she cares about most how she feels. Moping over how he’d given her this _look_ that made her want so badly to open the shut box of her heart and let every mortifying sentiment spill out, but instead she’d deflected, anxious, talking about nonsense things from when they were kids so she wouldn’t kiss him. Stupid. She doesn’t have time to care about that right now.

“Gil for your thoughts?” Aerith asks softly.

“It’s nothing,” says Tifa. “Just, um. Trying to sort through some things.”

“Well, whenever you’re ready, we’re all going to sit around the fire and tell some stories,” says Aerith, curling her fingers around Tifa’s hand and squeezing. “No rush, though.”

“Okay. You can head down now, I’ll just be a couple minutes.”

Aerith gives another tiny squeeze, then she lets go and rises to her feet. When she walks away her steps barely make a sound, like she’s floating, ethereal, not quite there. Tifa steadies herself with deep, long breaths, counting the seconds as she inhales, holds, exhales, repeats. Eventually she starts to think she can hold herself together, at least for the time being. It will have to do.

She gives the cityscape one last glance, thinking about how much and yet how little it resembles Kilika—the same ruination, same lingering threat of violence, but larger and older and more severe—then leaves to join the others at the fire.

The temple known as the Zanarkand Dome was the center of the great city once, the place from which its leaders ruled, and where, eventually, the rite of the Final Summoning came to be held. A millennium later, it’s the most intact structure remaining in Zanarkand’s ruins, the front gate standing improbably tall and proud amidst the rubble. Aerith watches it grow larger by the second as they make their approach.

“Anyone else feel like we’re being watched?” Zack murmurs.

“No shit,” says Cloud. “We’re getting hit by friends every couple of minutes.” He’s been downing bottles of ether to keep a steady stream of magic going, and it’s left him noticeably more on edge than usual. Aerith has half a mind to pull him aside, tell him to ease up on the spellcasting a little and just let her call on an aeon instead. Or else remind him that his Cait Sith _does_ have the power to kill with only a touch, if he’d just let go of it for once. But maybe blasting their foes into oblivion is cathartic for him. He doesn’t talk about his feelings, so they may have to just let him keep blowing things up until he feels better, she supposes.

“I don’t mean by fiends,” says Zack, seeming unfazed by the peevish reply. He peers around, frowning, then looks back to Aerith. “You think Sephiroth could’ve caught up with us already?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “Even he needs to sleep sometimes. If I had to guess, I’d say they probably waited to start on Gagazet until this morning.”

Somehow Zack seems to frown even deeper than before. “Then what—?” He stops, shakes his head. “Never mind. Probably just imagining things.”

Aerith almost reaches out to offer a comforting touch, but holds herself back. He’d confessed the night before that he needed a little space now, that if he clung too tightly to her he didn’t think he’d let go for anything, and it wasn’t fair to her. Said he still loved her, still wanted to stay by her side and guard her with his life, but had to start doing it from a distance. And while it had hurt— _does_ hurt—she wasn’t in a position to complain. She brought this on herself, on both of them, getting involved with someone despite knowing what fate had in store for her and then dragging him along for the most miserable of journeys. She could have spared his feelings back in Bevelle by giving him a firm and resounding _no_ , but she didn’t, and here they are.

In any case, she thinks there’s something to that gut feeling of his. She feels it, too, that sensation of some relentless gaze burning holes in her skull. Like the ruins are alive, watching, waiting. It could be the force that challenged her at Gagazet’s summit, something that guards Zanarkand from unwelcome intruders. Instinct tells Aerith it’s not that, though. It’s something different. Something wrong.

They reach the entrance to the Dome at last, tired and worn, and a priest of Yevon greets them. He looks into Aerith’s eyes scrutinizingly to cast judgment, then gives an approving nod. Says, “Lady Yunalesca will surely welcome your arrival,” which gives Aerith pause.

“Lady Yunalesca?” she echoes.

“The first High Summoner?” asks Tifa, sounding just as confused as Aerith feels. “ _The_ Lady Yunalesca?”

“The very same,” says the priest. “She has watched over this city for over one thousand years.”

Yunalesca, daughter of Yevon himself, first vanquisher of Sin, now an unsent keeping watch over the sanctuary that holds the Final Aeon. The thought makes Aerith’s pulse quicken and hair stand on end. Unsent spirits are dangerous things, no matter who they were in life. Rather than the awe she suspects she’s meant to be filled with, all she feels is a foreboding sickness at what waits for them in the inner sanctum. She thanks the priest, who tells her empathically to take her guardians with her and go on.

There are fiends in the Dome, too, the spirits of long-dead monks who never gave up their sacred duty of defending the temple, even after their own fall. A place full of dead things. Fitting, Aerith thinks morbidly, that her journey should end here.

She finally puts a stop to Cloud’s incessant spellcasting, holding out her staff and saying, “Wait, let me.” Then she draws on light itself, on holiness, and directs it toward the nearest green-skinned figure. The monk topples as the spell hits him, then dissipates.

“Huh,” says Cloud. He scratches his head with the hand that isn’t clutching his Cait Sith doll to him. “Didn’t know you could do that.”

“White magic does come in handy sometimes, you know,” she replies.

He opens his mouth to say something, but only gets as far as a short _It’s not_ before cutting off as something behind her catches his eye. He raises his arm and brings it down in a violent, decisive gesture. As Aerith whirls around she sees a large machina beast stumble from the bolt of lightning that cuts through it. “Zack,” Cloud calls.

“On it!” Zack answers, abandoning his fight with a group of monks to rush over toward Cloud and Aerith. And just as soon as he leaves his place, Tifa replaces him almost seamlessly, without a single word. The rhythm they’ve fallen into now is so perfect that Aerith can’t help the pride that swells in her in spite of everything.

It’s after this fight that they begin seeing visions form in the pyreflies, ghostly figures crafted from memories the same way they would be in the Farplane, but with a greater air of truth: These aren’t the memories of the temple’s visitors, but of the pyreflies themselves. Events, people, preserved forever by the lingering consciousness of the deceased.

The pyreflies form two women. One of them says, “ _It is the highest honor for which a guardian might ask._ _Use my life, Lady Yocun, and rid Spira of Sin._ ”

“I don’t understand,” Tifa says after the figures disappear. “What did she mean by ‘use my life’?”

“I don’t know,” says Aerith, feeling very abruptly and very profoundly that something is wrong here.

A bit further in, they do away with another group of enemies, and another vision appears. It’s a man, a priest. Something about him seems familiar, but Aerith can’t put her finger on what.

“ _I understand the terms. Now that the Calm has ended, I’d rather give meaning to the end of my life by fighting Sin than waste away in a bed. Even if it means leaving my wife to raise our child on her own._ ”

“Asshole,” Zack mutters with a ferocious kind of resentment. And while she shouldn’t agree, a very small part of her does.

“These people aren’t summoners,” says Cloud, staring at the space the pyrefly specter had just occupied. “So why are they talking about sacrificing themselves?”

“Because that’s what they did,” says a familiar voice from the shadows.

“Sir Vincent,” Aerith greets, forgoing the bow this time as she turns to face him. “You’ve been watching us, haven’t you?”

“I could see the potential in you when we met in Luca,” says Vincent. He’s half shrouded in darkness still, standing in the rubble of some fallen pillars. “I wanted to see if I was right. And to warn you.”

“About what?” asks Zack. He positions himself very slightly in front of Aerith, his body language not quite hostile, but still taut with wary anticipation, ready for anything.

“Yunalesca.” Vincent steps through the rubble, moving along the shadows so fluidly it’s as though he’s shadow himself. “She’s going to offer you a choice.”

“To sacrifice myself for the Final Summoning,” says Aerith, but Vincent shakes his head before she’s even finished speaking.

“She’s going to ask you who will become your fayth,” he says. “Someone important to you, so that your joining with their fayth is meaningful. The person you choose will help you defeat Sin… and then become Sin themselves.”

Everyone lets out a chorus of disbelieving sounds, horrified exclamations, protests. Everyone except for Aerith, who feels comprehension wash over her in an icy deluge.

_Use my life, Lady Yocun._

_It is the highest honor for which a guardian might ask._

_Rid Spira of Sin._

She looks at Vincent. The deep red of his eyes glimmers eerily in the pyreflies’ glow. She’s getting the very same feeling of wrongness from him that she did all that time ago, like he isn’t quite there. She asks, “Who was Lady Lucrecia’s fayth?”

Vincent’s façade of indifference gives way to a grimace, and when he turns away he’s so obscured by the darkness he’s just the barest silhouette. “Maester Hojo,” he says. “The father of her child.” Then, “It was supposed to be me. He and I both preferred it that way. But Lucrecia’s final gift—no. The curse she left me with was that I would survive.”

The feeling that sets in now is nothing so urgent as panic, but it’s just as disquieting, like her heart has slowed but each beat thunders in her. Her nerves are cold-hot, her limbs all leaden. Her lungs empty themselves, and she’s almost breathless as she says, “But you didn’t.”

There’s a pause. For a terrible moment she thinks he’s melded with the shadows after all, every trace of him so thoroughly vanished it’s like he never existed. Then he says, more wind than words, “No. I didn’t.”

Tifa lets out a frightened gasp. Out of the corner of her eye, Aerith sees her stumble back slightly. “You’re—”

“Unsent,” Zack finishes grimly. “So that’s why you left Sephiroth with the temple.”

“And why you were gone all this time,” says Aerith.

“For almost twenty years, I was more fiend than man,” says Vincent. “It took a long time for me to come back to myself.”

“Are you a threat?” asks Cloud.

“Not like this.”

“Vincent,” says Aerith, taking a step toward him, “why did you show yourself again? What were you doing in Luca?”

“I was catching up on things I’d missed,” he says. “Chasing rumors.”

“About Sephiroth?”

“Partly, yes.” When a pyrefly floats by just so, Aerith catches a glimpse of him, a flash of scarlet fabric and shining black hair. “And partly about what was happening within Yevon. A high priest going on pilgrimage, Heidegger sacrificing the Crusaders to extend Bevelle’s reach to the south, and now… the death of Grand Maester Shinra.”

Now Aerith _does_ reel with shock, clapping a hand over her mouth and trying to keep her legs from giving way underneath her. “When?” she breathes. “How?”

“Four nights ago,” says Vincent. “Murdered in his own home.” He chuckles quietly. “The church is eating itself.”

Leaning on her staff so she doesn’t crumple immediately to the ground, Aerith lowers herself slowly onto the remains of a broken pillar and lets all of this sink in. If the grand maester is dead, Yevon must be in crisis. She should do something, she knows, but she isn’t sure what. The only thing she’s certain of is this: If what Vincent said is true, that a summoner must sacrifice one of their guardians to defeat Sin, and in the process condemn the person they care about to a wretched life as the embodiment of all suffering, she can’t be here. Can’t do this. Can’t ask anyone at all to make that sacrifice. Everything she’s said before about the promise of peace and fleeting hope is now meaningless if this is the price for it. But just going back now, after all of this—letting someone else make this unconscionable choice, going about her life as if everything is normal—she doesn’t know if she can do that, either.

“Now more than ever, the people of Spira need something to cling to,” says Vincent. “They look to the summoners for the glimmer of hope the rest of Yevon’s hierarchy has failed to deliver.”

She balls her hands into fists, clenches them until her nails dig into her flesh, says nothing.

“I came here hoping you could be the one to bring it to them,” Vincent continues. “The alternative was that Sephiroth would do it, or else die in the process, and for Lucrecia’s sake I couldn’t let that happen. But it looks like whatever conscience I have left has gotten the better of me.”

“Which means?” Zack demands more than asks.

There’s another pause. All around them the pyreflies cry out gently. Vincent says, “You should turn back. Forget this place, leave your pilgrimage behind you. Enjoy the time you have with the people you care for, and hope that Sin doesn’t cut it short.”

And Aerith can’t help but ask, “And what about Sephiroth? Will you tell him the same thing?”

“He has no reason to listen to me,” Vincent replies. “What am I to him? The traitor who led his mother to her death and then left him to grow up alone? I would be lucky if he even let me speak before sending me to the Farplane.”

She couldn’t say for absolute certain, but Aerith thinks she understands Sephiroth just well enough to suspect Vincent is right. There is more hatred and spite flowing through that man than blood. Even so, she doesn’t feel right putting this burden on him. It was different when she could think about it in terms of her own failure, and the assurance that he could somehow redeem her in the event of her premature demise. But her refusal? Her renunciation of her vows? Whatever they may think of each other—whatever this strange rivalry is—it’s irrelevant in the face of this horrible truth. She will not ask someone else to do what she will not.

“Then I’ll tell him,” she says, because it feels like the only good option available to her now. “He shouldn’t be far behind. We can go back to the road and wait for him at the bottom of the mountain.”

“Wait.” Zack spins around to face her fully, wide-eyed and slack-jawed and rigid, the absolute picture of shock. “What are you saying? We’re—are you leaving? Quitting?”

Aerith looks at him, then turns to look at Tifa and Cloud, too, taking in their surprise as well. She looks to Vincent, who’s still mostly in shadow, but he meets her gaze with eyes like gleaming rubies. She looks back to Zack, licks her lips, clutches her staff closer to her body, and searches for the place her voice has left to. “Yeah,” she says, maybe too quietly. “I guess I am.”

“You’re sure?” he asks, stepping closer too unsteadily for even ground.

For one disquieting second, she isn’t. She’s a summoner, like her mother before her. She’s trained for years, honing her mind and her magic to make space within her soul for the fayth to dwell. She’s journeyed all over Spira and made peace with herself and the world in preparation for a young death. But that uncertainty vanishes when she thinks about Zack, who has done none of those things; who has parents far away who are waiting to see him again; who has vowed to protect her with his own precious life; who would be living safely, peacefully in Bevelle now if not for her. Zack, who’s looking at her with those big, hopeful puppy dog eyes. The world would be worse off without him.

(And just after that, a little voice in her head tells her that it would be worse off without her, too. The voice sounds a lot like a belligerent Al Bhed girl with a penchant for swearing, and it’s small but insistent, demanding to be noticed. For the very first time, Aerith doesn’t try to silence it.)

“I’m sure,” she says. Then, “I’m not doing it, Zack.”

Without a word, he all but collapses onto her as he takes her into his arms and holds her in a bone-crushing grip, so tight she thinks it would hurt if she could feel anything but dizzying, glorious relief sweeping her up in its currents.

The difficulties that lie ahead of them are innumerable. For now, though, Aerith can only revel in this strange, unbelievable, impossible development: She is going to live, and that is wonderful and frightening all at once. Her life is hers again and she has to do something with that. She grins until she laughs, laughs until she cries, and lets herself go limp in Zack’s arms because she doesn’t have to be infallible anymore, doesn’t have to be a font of strength and incandescent hope.

Eventually she calms, at least for now, her sobs dying in her aching throat. Somewhere behind her, she hears Cloud ask, “So what does this mean?”

She laughs again, pulls away from Zack just a bit to wipe at her eyes and nose with her palms and backs of her hands, still sniffling. If only she could remember where she put the handkerchief Tifa just returned to her. “I don’t know,” she says. “I guess we figure something out.”

“Whatever happens, we’re still with you,” says Tifa, just a bit hoarse, like she’s been crying, too. Sweetest of sweethearts. “Right, guys?”

“Right,” says Cloud, while Zack just presses his lips to Aerith’s forehead without a word before finally letting her go.

“Wherever you decide to go from here,” says Vincent—and Aerith, having forgotten he was there, jumps at the sound of his voice—“I’ll follow you as far as the entrance to the temple. Your business with Sephiroth is your own.”

Aerith turns to face him. “Should we tell him you were here?”

“He’ll know,” says Vincent. “The Guado are keen to the scent of the Farplane.”

“Sir Vincent,” she says, then stops, not knowing what else to say.

“He won’t ask about me. There’s nothing you could tell him that he doesn’t already know.”

She hesitates, then nods.

Vincent breaks eye contact with her and turns away. “I’ll scout ahead. Join me when you’re ready,” he says, then vanishes.

Aerith lets out the smallest of sighs. Then she looks at all the others in turn—Zack with his shining eyes, Tifa with her shaky smile, Cloud with his usual look of indifference that Aerith knows isn’t real at all. She keeps her gaze on him and grins, watching as his forced stoicism gradually melts away into something sincere. He doesn’t quite smile back, but his stare is honest and open and full of something she likes to think could be hope. Tifa leans forward to catch a look at him, too, all fondness. Briefly, Aerith wonders what will happen with the two of them now that the shadow of her death isn’t cast over their every action. She hopes it will be beautiful.

“We’re ready to serve, your ladyship,” Zack pipes up, breaking the silence and earning a quiet huff from Cloud. “Anywhere you go, we’ll follow.”

By now positively beaming, Aerith says breathlessly, “Anywhere I go?”

Zack nods. Tifa takes one of Cloud’s hands in both of her own, then nods, too. Cloud just gapes, blinking stupidly at Tifa, a shock of pink bursting across his face.

Aerith nods as well. Something bright and fantastic thrums inside of her, fathomless, unstoppable. She says, “Then let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are Many Things i probably forgot to address but! oh well!!! you and i will both just have to live with that!!!!!
> 
> anyway i hope this was at least readable. i did a lot of things with this fic that i don't normally do so it was a challenge and an adventure to write. if nothing else i'm glad i had the opportunity to try something like this out :)
> 
> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/spelldaggers_) if that's a thing you care about. mostly i yell about video games
> 
> ty for reading and have a wonderful day 💕

**Author's Note:**

> (psssst if you wanna know what all the al bhed says [here is a translator](https://stephenw32768.appspot.com/albhed/))


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